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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a secluded location together represents a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning 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 marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright hidden, but they're often partially blocked, shown from strange angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in multiple paths, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they frequently write toward theme rather than shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful history is revealed, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies 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 original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in theaters on 14 November.