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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded location together signifies a fresh tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn quickly has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright concealed, but they're often partially blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak 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 early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience above a wish to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write for 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 understands just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids asking what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her painful past awaits, the figure still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in theaters on 14 November.