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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a isolated location together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, viewed from strange angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a desire to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for theme instead of shooting toward immediacy. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful demo reel of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic history is revealed, the character still seems complete.

That's true 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 original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, appropriate and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always manage: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.