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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together represents a fresh level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces discord through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from odd perspectives, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in any number of directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a wish to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write for message instead of filming for immediacy. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed 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.

That's true 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 finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.