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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a isolated location together signifies a new tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts 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 approximately twelve months, which we learn quickly has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality 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, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright hidden, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in multiple paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently script for theme instead of shooting toward immediacy. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without permitting the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual virtuoso showcase of a female on the brink of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird things that take place around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful history is revealed, the figure still seems complete.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare tales do not always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in cinemas on November 14th.