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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a isolated location together represents a new level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive 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 believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears faint sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in multiple paths, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer above a desire to twist that story into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently script for message instead of filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical masterful showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the heck is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful past awaits, the figure still feels fully realized.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell tales don't always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.