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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a new level 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 highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he describes some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements mixed together 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 due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently script for message rather than filming toward immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual masterful demo reel of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is happening.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful history is revealed, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and improbable to generate a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always manage: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.