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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded location together represents a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising 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 learn early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears 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 perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're often partially obscured, viewed from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific 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 most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the periphery 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 spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently script for message rather than shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to advance those components without allowing the movie to turn into vague woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and improbable to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in cinemas on 14 November.