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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a isolated location together represents a fresh level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs or as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're frequently partially blocked, viewed from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives faint noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently script toward theme instead of shooting for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without allowing the movie to become vague mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always manage: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on November 14th.