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In recent years, scary movies has often explored unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together represents a fresh level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his shot choices, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, shown from odd angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she perceives faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in any number of directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a wish to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they often write for message rather than filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful showcase of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the hell is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded 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 annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful history is revealed, the character still feels complete.

That's true 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 standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt 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.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.