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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a new level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're frequently partially obscured, shown from strange angles, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she perceives faint sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance asks if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to bend that plot into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script toward theme instead of filming for instant impact. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without permitting the movie to become vague woo-woo excess.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids asking what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful history is revealed, the character still seems fully realized.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and improbable to spawn a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.