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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a new tier 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 highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with red flags nor as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're often somewhat obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write for message rather than filming toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the character is written and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past is revealed, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on 14 November.