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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away 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 approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he explains 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 at ease together.

The director brings in discord through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from strange angles, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience above a desire to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write for message instead of filming toward immediacy. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical masterful demo reel of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness 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 specific skeleton key to her painful history is revealed, the character still seems complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem gratifying, appropriate and improbable to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.