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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded location together signifies a new level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with red flags nor as oddly perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

The director introduces tension through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright concealed, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby stream flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend 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 actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods 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 due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience above a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write for theme rather than filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those components without permitting the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful showcase of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her painful past awaits, the figure still seems complete.

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 finishes up, its compact structure seem satisfying, appropriate and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on 14 November.