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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together represents a fresh tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new 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 fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs or as oddly perfect as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces tension through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she perceives faint noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby stream flowing 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 by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could make the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to bend that plot into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write for theme rather than filming toward immediacy. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in cinemas on 14 November.