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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run 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 corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could cause the new film feel to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they often script toward message rather than shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids asking what the hell is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful past awaits, the figure still feels fully realized.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on 14 November.