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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a isolated location together represents a fresh level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover quickly has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, shown from odd perspectives, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she perceives faint noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the nearby stream flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run 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 periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often write for theme instead of shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract woo-woo 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 virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still seems fully realized.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on 14 November.