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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together represents a fresh tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the adjacent 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 left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience above a wish to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current scary films are, they frequently write toward message instead of filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to irritation with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still seems complete.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.