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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From 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 venturing to a secluded spot together represents a new tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs nor as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

The director brings in tension through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the adjacent river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple paths, its frightening components blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest 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 thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for message instead of filming for immediacy. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded times: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her painful past awaits, the figure still seems complete.

That's true of the film 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 original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell tales don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.