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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy 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 discover quickly has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from odd perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz thinks she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply memorable overlay 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 tells a companion she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience over a wish to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current scary films are, they often script for message rather than shooting toward immediacy. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how far to push those components without allowing the movie to become abstract woo-woo excess.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unguarded times: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful history is revealed, the character still seems complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on 14 November.