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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded location together signifies a new level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly 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 early scenes together are neither as filled with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director brings in discord through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely hidden, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, 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 acquaintance asks if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write toward theme instead of filming for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful past is revealed, the character still seems complete.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, 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 finishes up, its tight confines seem 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 tales don't always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.