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In recent years, scary movies has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together represents a new tier 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 recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in discord through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're often partially blocked, shown from odd perspectives, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to twist that plot into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently script toward message rather than shooting for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful demo reel of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded moments: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful history is revealed, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on 14 November.