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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together represents a new level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with red flags nor as oddly perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he describes some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

The director brings in discord through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the new film feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience over a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they often write toward message instead of filming for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those elements without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the character is written and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still feels fully realized.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales do not always achieve: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.