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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a secluded location together signifies a new tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs or as oddly perfect as other current 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 describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're often somewhat obscured, viewed from strange angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult 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 thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience above a wish to twist that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for theme rather than shooting for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful past awaits, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on 14 November.