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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're often partially obscured, shown from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent river rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in multiple paths, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they frequently script for message instead of filming toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful grounding element 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 does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unguarded times: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic past is revealed, the figure still seems 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 tight confines feel satisfying, appropriate and improbable to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.