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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together represents a new tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs or as oddly perfect as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

The director introduces discord through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're often partially obscured, viewed from odd perspectives, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of 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 experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience above a wish to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many current scary films are, they frequently write toward theme rather than shooting for immediacy. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the character is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still feels fully realized.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on 14 November.