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In recent years, scary movies has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a isolated location together represents a fresh level 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 recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover quickly has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with warning signs nor as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact 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 shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from strange angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears faint sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick 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 refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience above a desire to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write for theme rather than filming toward immediacy. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always achieve: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.