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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, viewed from odd perspectives, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she hears faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent river flowing 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 by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the new film seem to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a desire to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write toward message instead of filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become vague mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful showcase of a female on the brink of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to irritation with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and improbable to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always manage: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.