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In recent years, horror cinema has often explored toxic romance with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple traveling to a secluded spot together represents a new tier 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 recently released and much-concealed horror movie 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 hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

Osgood Perkins introduces tension through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely hidden, but they're often partially obscured, viewed from odd angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend asks if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with another movie scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a desire to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script toward theme instead of filming toward immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to become vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful showcase of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected moments: a skeptical glance of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell stories don't always manage: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the complicated business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper debuts in theaters on November 14th.