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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a isolated spot together represents a new tier of terror.

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 recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

The director introduces tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely concealed, but they're often somewhat obscured, shown from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components blended 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 prolific run for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience over a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current scary films are, they often write for message instead of filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful history is revealed, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.