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In recent years, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a new level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director brings in discord through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright concealed, but they're often partially obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a desire to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many current scary films are, they frequently script toward message instead of shooting toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without permitting the movie to become vague mystical excess.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is going on.) However Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful history is revealed, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.