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In recent years, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a isolated spot 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) early on in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover quickly has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, 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 relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're often partially blocked, shown from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the nearby stream flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer 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 another movie scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a desire to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often script toward message rather than shooting toward instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to become vague 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 usual masterful showcase of a female on the brink of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the heck is happening.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful past is revealed, the figure still feels fully realized.

The same applies 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 leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories do not always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.