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In recent years, horror cinema has often explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins 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 a couple for about a year, which we learn quickly has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags or as suspiciously perfect as other current 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 oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

The director introduces tension through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike 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 productive 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 most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the new film feel to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a wish to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often script toward theme rather than shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to push those components without permitting the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids asking what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic history awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare stories do not always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.