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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning 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 marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his shot choices, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright hidden, but they're often somewhat blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a wish to bend that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write toward theme rather than filming toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful history awaits, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.