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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together represents a new tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces discord through his shot choices, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from odd angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could make the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer above a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write for message instead of filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the figure still seems fully realized.

That's true of the film 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 finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and improbable to generate a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on 14 November.