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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're often somewhat obscured, viewed from odd angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the nearby river rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what makes 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 love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write toward theme instead of filming toward instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the character still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original 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 ideas in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.