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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often explored unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together represents a fresh tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in discord through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're often partially blocked, shown from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience above a wish to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often script for message instead of shooting toward immediacy. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those components without allowing the movie to turn into vague mystical excess.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force 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 role is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded times: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful history is revealed, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on 14 November.