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In recent years, horror cinema has often explored unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together represents a fresh tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins 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 a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in multiple paths, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to twist that story into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write for theme rather than filming toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those components without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical virtuoso showcase of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the figure still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on 14 November.