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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together represents a fresh tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with red flags nor as suspiciously perfect as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

The director brings in tension through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from odd angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares 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 most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a desire to twist that story into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they often script toward theme instead of filming toward immediacy. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those components without permitting the movie to become vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong 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 oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.