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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often explored toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together represents a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts 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 approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright hidden, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a wish to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they often write for theme instead of shooting for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical virtuoso showcase of a female on the brink of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful past is revealed, the character still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always achieve: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on 14 November.