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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together represents a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures 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 peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently partially blocked, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the adjacent river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in multiple paths, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward 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 viewer above a wish to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write toward message instead of shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical excess.

He also seems to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on 14 November.