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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh tier of terror.

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 much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs or as oddly perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he describes some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're often partially obscured, viewed from strange perspectives, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the nearby stream flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a desire to twist that story into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write for message rather than filming toward immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become vague mystical self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always manage: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on 14 November.