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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a new tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn quickly has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, viewed from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river rushing all around her, as if 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 cabin. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to twist that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write for theme rather than filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without permitting the movie to become abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful showcase of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird 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 sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unguarded times: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful past is revealed, 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 plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.