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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a isolated spot together signifies 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 recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with warning signs or as oddly perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're often partially obscured, shown from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she hears faint sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, 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 an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just out of focus 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, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write toward message instead of shooting toward immediacy. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to turn into vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful history is revealed, the figure still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on 14 November.