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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together represents a fresh level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, 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 pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures 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 oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem at ease together.

The director introduces tension through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright concealed, but they're often somewhat obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the adjacent river rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to bend that plot into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script toward message rather than shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those components without permitting the movie to turn into abstract mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful history is revealed, the figure still seems fully realized.

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 leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always manage: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.