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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a new tier of fright.

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 recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces tension through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she perceives faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay 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 informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the new film feel to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a desire to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current scary films are, they frequently write for message instead of shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those components without allowing the movie to turn into vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a female on the brink of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the figure still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell tales don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.