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In recent years, horror cinema has often explored toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces discord through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely concealed, but they're often partially obscured, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience above a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for theme rather than filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales do not always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.