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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a new 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 horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she hears soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, 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 exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently script toward theme instead of shooting for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a sense of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to become abstract woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still feels fully realized.

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 leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel gratifying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.