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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often explored toxic romance with the same intensity as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together signifies a fresh tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover early on has marked the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his shot choices, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright concealed, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears faint sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple paths, its horror elements 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 last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to twist that story into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently script for theme instead of shooting for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a sense of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the character is written and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany provides 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 quickness to irritation with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her painful history awaits, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the film as a whole, 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 neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner 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 theaters on 14 November.