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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a isolated location together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover early on has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags nor as oddly perfect as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem 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 seldom completely hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay 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 phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in multiple paths, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to twist that story into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write for theme instead of filming toward instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful history awaits, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the film 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 finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on 14 November.