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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often explored toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together represents a fresh level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem at ease together.

The director introduces discord through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright concealed, but they're often partially blocked, shown from strange angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple paths, its frightening components mixed together 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 past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many current scary films are, they often write toward theme instead of filming for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical masterful showcase of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her painful history awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, 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 gratifying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell tales don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.