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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together represents a fresh level of terror.

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 new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're often partially blocked, shown from odd angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent stream flowing 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 calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to twist that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently script toward message instead of shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.