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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded location together represents a new tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags or as suspiciously perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he describes some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current scary films are, they frequently write toward message instead of filming for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell tales don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in cinemas on November 14th.