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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a isolated location together represents a fresh tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely hidden, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, viewed from odd angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer 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 directions, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares 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 most unsettling initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the new film seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a wish to twist that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often script toward message rather than shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the character still feels complete.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.