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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a new level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces discord through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright hidden, but they're often somewhat blocked, shown from strange angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern 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 rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in multiple paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer 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 an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write toward theme rather than filming for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to become abstract woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the weird things that take place around her, and the character is written and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful history is revealed, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always achieve: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on 14 November.