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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated location together represents a new level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with red flags nor as oddly perfect as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from odd angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls 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 supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple paths, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the new film seem to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write for message rather than shooting for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) However Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unguarded times: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the figure still seems complete.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on 14 November.