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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a isolated location together represents a fresh level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces discord through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're often somewhat obscured, shown from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's vents. 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 transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a desire to bend that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often script for theme instead of filming toward instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to turn into abstract mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual masterful demo reel of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell tales do not always manage: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in theaters on 14 November.