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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together represents a fresh level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins 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 approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're often partially obscured, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby stream flowing 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 inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run 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 out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the new film seem to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write for theme rather than filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual masterful showcase of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in cinemas on November 14th.