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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a isolated location together represents a fresh level of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the period 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 neither as dotted 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 slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem at ease together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright hidden, but they're frequently partially blocked, viewed from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby river rushing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple paths, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write toward theme rather than filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without permitting the movie to become abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unguarded moments: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful past is revealed, the figure still seems complete.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not 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.