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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded location together represents a new tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience above a wish to bend that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they often write toward theme rather than shooting for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful history is revealed, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales do not always manage: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on 14 November.