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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together represents a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, viewed from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to bend that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often script toward message instead of shooting for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful demo reel of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful past is revealed, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales do not always manage: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.