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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn quickly has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with red flags nor as oddly perfect as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with an additional film 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 corner of the eye) 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 diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience above a wish to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write for theme rather than shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso showcase of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful history awaits, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell tales don't always achieve: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.