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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a new level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces discord through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the nearby stream flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience above a wish to twist that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they often write for theme rather than filming for immediacy. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful showcase of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful past awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the movie 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 gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always manage: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.