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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together signifies a fresh level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

The director brings in tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're often partially blocked, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple directions, its frightening components blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience over a wish to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for message rather than filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to irritation with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the character still seems fully realized.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.