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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright hidden, but they're often somewhat obscured, shown from strange angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the nearby river rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write for message instead of filming for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful demo reel of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history is revealed, the character still seems fully realized.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on 14 November.