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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same 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 love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together represents a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director brings in discord through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from odd perspectives, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she perceives faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the nearby stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write toward theme rather than shooting for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become abstract mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still feels complete.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales don't always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.