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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded location together represents a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with warning signs or as oddly perfect as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright concealed, but they're often partially obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she perceives faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply memorable overlay 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 phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in multiple paths, its frightening components blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the new film seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write for theme rather than filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful past is revealed, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell tales do not always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.