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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often explored toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together represents a fresh 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 recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover early on has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs or as oddly idyllic as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his shot choices, 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 framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer 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 due out next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often script for message instead of filming toward immediacy. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual masterful showcase of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still feels complete.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to generate a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on 14 November.