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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together represents a new tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover quickly has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director brings in tension through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're often somewhat obscured, viewed from strange angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write for message instead of shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to irritation with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful past awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and improbable to generate a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.