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In recent years, horror cinema has often explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together represents a new level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright concealed, but they're often partially blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend asks if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple paths, its frightening components blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to twist that plot into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they often write for theme instead of filming for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual virtuoso showcase of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still seems complete.

That's true 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 concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.