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In recent years, scary movies has often explored toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together represents a new level of terror.

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 much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover early on has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (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 subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from strange angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition 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 acquaintance inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to bend that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write for theme instead of shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that take place around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unguarded times: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always manage: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.