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In recent years, scary movies has frequently explored toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded location together signifies a fresh level of terror.

Thus it's no shock 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 horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn quickly has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, viewed from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives faint noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – appears like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal mix. 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 another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write for message instead of shooting toward immediacy. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without permitting the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is written and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected times: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful past is revealed, the figure still seems fully realized.

That's true of the movie 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 concludes, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales do not always manage: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in cinemas on 14 November.