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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently explored unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a fresh level of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with red flags or as oddly perfect as other current figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're often partially blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she perceives soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the adjacent river flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive marketing, could cause the new film seem to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a wish to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many current scary films are, they frequently write for message rather than filming toward immediacy. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a sense of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into vague mystical excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her painful past is revealed, the character still seems 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 original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel satisfying, correct and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell stories don't always manage: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in cinemas on November 14th.