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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled accent as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – seems 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 experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current scary films are, they often script for message instead of shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always manage: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in theaters on 14 November.