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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded location together signifies a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful 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, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're often partially obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists 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 overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could make the new film seem to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write toward message instead of shooting toward immediacy. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic history awaits, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always manage: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in cinemas on November 14th.