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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a new level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs or 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 slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his shot choices, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive 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 exactly that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently script for message rather than filming for immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical virtuoso showcase of a female on the verge of doom. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel satisfying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories don't always manage: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in cinemas on 14 November.