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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling to a secluded spot together represents a fresh level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, viewed from strange perspectives, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she did mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write toward theme instead of filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) However 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 quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales do not always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.