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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a isolated location together signifies a new level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some oddities 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 appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the new film seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often script toward message rather than shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without permitting the movie to become vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.