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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; 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 isolated location together signifies a fresh level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins 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 discover early on 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 dotted with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled 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 periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write toward message instead of shooting for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical masterful demo reel of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in cinemas on 14 November.