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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a isolated location together signifies a new level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. 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 prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the new film seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience over a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write for theme rather than filming toward instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual virtuoso showcase of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids asking what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful past awaits, the figure still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales do not always manage: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.