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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded location together represents a fresh tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful 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 idyllic as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the new film feel to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to twist that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often script toward message rather than filming toward instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those components without allowing the movie to become abstract woo-woo excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the character is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always manage: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.