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In recent years, horror cinema has often explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away 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 learn early on has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director brings in tension through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright hidden, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the new film seem to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience above a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write toward theme instead of filming toward instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful showcase of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still seems complete.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and improbable to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in cinemas on 14 November.