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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh level of terror.

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 about a year, which we discover early on has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

The director introduces tension through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she hears soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, 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 companion she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films 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 make the new film seem to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they often script for theme rather than shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

He also seems to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded times: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her painful history is revealed, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales don't always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on 14 November.