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In recent years, scary movies has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair traveling 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 short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, shown from strange angles, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took mushrooms; 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 directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the corner 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 diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently script for theme instead of filming for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to push those elements without permitting the movie to become abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful past is revealed, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in cinemas on 14 November.