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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded location together represents a new level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on 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 fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent river flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple paths, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently script for theme rather than filming for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the character is written and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction 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 phone. Though no particular master clue to her painful past awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.