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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together signifies a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

The director introduces tension through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write toward message instead of shooting for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know 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 doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the figure still seems fully realized.

That's true 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 leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, appropriate and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.