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In recent years, horror cinema has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded location together signifies a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning 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 signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs or as oddly perfect as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his shot choices, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in multiple directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write toward theme instead of shooting for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those components without permitting the movie to become vague mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful history awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

That's true of the movie 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 concludes, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.