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In recent years, scary movies has often explored toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a secluded location together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other recent characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're often partially blocked, shown from strange angles, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple paths, its frightening components mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could make the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to twist that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often script toward message rather than shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to become vague mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical masterful demo reel of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) However Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful history awaits, the character still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in theaters on 14 November.