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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a new level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem at ease together.

The director introduces discord through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from odd angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write toward message instead of filming for immediacy. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical virtuoso showcase of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the weird things that take place around her, and the character is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her painful past is revealed, the figure still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, 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 unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories don't always manage: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.