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In recent years, horror cinema has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a isolated location together signifies a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs nor as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a desire to twist that story into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write for theme instead of filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful showcase of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on 14 November.