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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together represents a fresh tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces discord through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, shown from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend asks if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in multiple paths, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they often write for theme rather than filming toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful past is revealed, the character still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and improbable to spawn a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.