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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often explored toxic romance with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded location together signifies a fresh tier of terror.

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 bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds 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 reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to bend that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many current scary films are, they frequently write toward theme instead of shooting toward immediacy. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those components without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the character is written and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic past is revealed, the figure still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on 14 November.