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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a isolated location together signifies a fresh level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn quickly has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from odd angles, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay 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 calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. 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 past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write toward message rather than filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded times: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the figure still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.