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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together represents a fresh tier of terror.

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 recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from odd perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. 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 run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current scary films are, they frequently write for theme instead of filming toward instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without allowing the movie to become vague mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in cinemas on November 14th.