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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director brings in tension through his shot choices, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from odd angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could cause the new film feel to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a wish to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current scary films are, they frequently write toward message rather than filming toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the character is written and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the film as a whole, 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 finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always manage: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.