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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a new level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together 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 understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags or as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie 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, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright concealed, but they're often partially obscured, shown from strange angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months 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 eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what renders 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 love allegory. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write for theme instead of shooting toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical virtuoso demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her painful history awaits, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.