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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a new level of terror.

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 horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he describes some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

The director introduces discord through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're often partially obscured, viewed from strange angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the new film feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer above a desire to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they often script toward theme instead of shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, appropriate and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.