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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock 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 scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn quickly has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with red flags or as oddly perfect as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

The director introduces tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent stream rushing 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 left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could make the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick designed 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 way it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to twist that plot into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many current scary films are, they frequently write for theme instead of filming toward immediacy. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, 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 concludes, its tight confines seem gratifying, appropriate and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.