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In recent years, scary movies has often delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a secluded location together signifies a new level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're often somewhat obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after 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 dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to twist that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they frequently write toward theme rather than filming for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to turn into vague woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful past is revealed, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.