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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored toxic romance with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a new level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with warning signs or as oddly idyllic as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates 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 intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods 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 tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently script for theme instead of filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to push those elements without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected times: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.