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

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem at ease together.

The director introduces tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright concealed, but they're often somewhat obscured, shown from strange angles, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for message instead of shooting toward immediacy. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to push those components without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful past awaits, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell stories don't always manage: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in cinemas on 14 November.