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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together represents a new level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover quickly has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he describes some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces discord through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a wish to bend that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write toward message instead of filming toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. 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 or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.