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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a isolated spot together represents a fresh tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are neither as filled with red flags nor as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright concealed, but they're often partially blocked, shown from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby stream flowing all around her, like 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 friend asks if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer over a wish to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often script toward theme instead of filming toward instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without permitting the movie to turn into abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful showcase of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded times: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic past is revealed, the figure still feels fully realized.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, 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 gratifying, correct and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: maybe it takes a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on 14 November.