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In recent years, scary movies has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together represents a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy 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 discover early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely hidden, but they're often partially obscured, shown from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend 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 paths, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer above a desire to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they often script for message rather than filming for immediacy. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become abstract woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still seems fully realized.

The same applies 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 leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales don't always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in cinemas on November 14th.