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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely hidden, but they're often partially obscured, shown from odd perspectives, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby stream flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in multiple paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write toward theme rather than filming toward immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.