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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs 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) starts to feel uneasy 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 about a year, which we discover quickly has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the nearby stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in multiple paths, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could make the new film feel to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience over a wish to twist that story into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they often script for theme instead of shooting for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful history is revealed, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in theaters on 14 November.