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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a new level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts 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 together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

The director introduces tension through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright hidden, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film 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 renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently script toward theme rather than filming for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual virtuoso showcase of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still seems complete.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.