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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored 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 (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together represents a new level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and highly secretive 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 seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with warning signs nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're often partially obscured, shown from odd angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply memorable superimposition of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could cause the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to dress up what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write toward theme instead of shooting for immediacy. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of authentic, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those components without permitting the movie to turn into vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the character is written and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen friend on the phone. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the figure still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex 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 seem gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell tales do not always achieve: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in theaters on November 14th.