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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a new tier of fright.

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 recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled 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 social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, viewed from odd angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could make the new film feel to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience above a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write toward theme instead of filming toward instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual masterful showcase of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful history is revealed, the figure still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.