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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together represents a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely hidden, but they're often partially obscured, viewed from odd perspectives, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a desire to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write toward theme rather than shooting for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a sense of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids asking what the heck is happening.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.