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In recent years, horror cinema has often explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral 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 seem comfortable together.

The director introduces tension through his shot choices, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely concealed, but they're often somewhat obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the nearby stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write for theme rather than shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to become vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the character still seems complete.

That's true of the film 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 innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and improbable to generate a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.