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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together represents a fresh level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning 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 signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright hidden, but they're often somewhat blocked, shown from strange angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes 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 companion she calls when she's left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (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 murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer above a desire to bend that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently script for message rather than shooting toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical excess.

He also seems to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful showcase of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz does get alarmed 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 scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic history awaits, the figure still seems fully realized.

That's true of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in theaters on 14 November.