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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From 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 blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a isolated location together represents a new tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with red flags nor as oddly perfect as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright concealed, but they're often somewhat obscured, shown from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious 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 friend she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often script toward theme rather than shooting for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful showcase of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is going on.) 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 fragility of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her painful past is revealed, the figure still feels complete.

That's true 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 original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in cinemas on November 14th.