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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together represents a new tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with red flags 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 somewhat mumbled accent as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, viewed from odd angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of directions, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the new film seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often write for theme rather than filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical virtuoso demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious 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 spawn a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.