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In recent years, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (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 level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags nor as oddly perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from strange angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike 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 past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write toward message instead of filming toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical excess.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on 14 November.