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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together represents a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover quickly has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely hidden, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from strange angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, 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 cabin. Her friend asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled 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 periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many current scary films are, they frequently write for theme rather than shooting toward immediacy. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird things that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded moments: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still feels fully realized.

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 leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell tales don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.