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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together represents a fresh tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable 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 quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience above a wish to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current scary films are, they frequently write toward message rather than shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated 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 character still seems fully realized.

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 leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.