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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together represents a fresh tier of fright.

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 together for about a year, which we discover early on has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs or as oddly perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair 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 fact that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem at ease together.

The director brings in tension through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, viewed from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy 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 embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a wish to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write for theme rather than filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual virtuoso showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out 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 scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids asking what the hell is going on.) However Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still seems complete.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, appropriate and improbable to generate a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in cinemas on November 14th.