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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 manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together represents a fresh tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn quickly has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem at ease together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're often partially obscured, viewed from strange angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears faint sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the nearby 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 left alone at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. 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 last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they often write toward theme instead of shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual masterful showcase of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded 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 speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in cinemas on 14 November.