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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated spot together signifies 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 new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry 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 fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. 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 concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in multiple paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, 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 tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience above a desire to twist that story into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they often script for theme rather than shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those components without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful history awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and improbable to generate a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always achieve: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in cinemas on November 14th.