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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together represents a new level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience over a wish to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write for message instead of filming toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a sense of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the character is written and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic history awaits, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell tales don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on 14 November.