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In recent years, scary movies has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together represents a fresh tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn quickly has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with red flags nor as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces discord through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely concealed, but they're often partially obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears faint sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent river rushing 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 by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write for message instead of filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to become abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem gratifying, appropriate and improbable to generate a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on 14 November.