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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded location together represents a new level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover 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 initial moments together are neither as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in discord through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience above a desire 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 shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still feels complete.

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 standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, appropriate and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories don't always manage: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.