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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a new tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, 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 relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces discord through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend asks if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in multiple paths, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer above a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script for theme rather than shooting toward immediacy. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange occurrences 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 inexplicably avoids inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.