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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh tier 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 scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely concealed, but they're often partially blocked, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent river rushing all around her, as if 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 friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments 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 Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film seem to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience above a desire to twist that story into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write for theme instead of shooting toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those components without allowing the movie to turn into vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical virtuoso showcase of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful past awaits, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.