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In recent years, scary movies has often delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a new 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 scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with warning signs or as oddly perfect as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities 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 comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright concealed, but they're often partially obscured, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a surreal mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game designed to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to twist that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many current scary films are, they frequently write for theme rather than filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful history is revealed, the figure still feels complete.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in cinemas on 14 November.