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In recent years, horror cinema has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; 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 location together represents 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) early on in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels 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 rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, viewed from odd angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates 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 overlay of the nearby stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. 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 streak for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to twist that plot into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write toward message instead of shooting toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract 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 showcase of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids asking what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the character still seems complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem satisfying, appropriate and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.