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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a secluded location together represents a fresh tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

The director brings in discord through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely hidden, but they're often somewhat obscured, shown from strange angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent river flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry 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 scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the new film seem to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience above a wish to twist that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often write for theme instead of filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the role 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 going on.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich 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, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always achieve: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in cinemas on November 14th.