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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently explored toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a isolated location together represents a new tier of terror.

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 new and highly secretive scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover early on has signified the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as filled with red flags or as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They appear at ease together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom completely hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, viewed from strange angles, or composed in scenes with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives soft sounds through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's left alone at the lodge. Her acquaintance inquires if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest early moments are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive ad campaign, could cause the new film feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a desire to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write for message instead of shooting toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those elements without permitting the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a woman on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the weird occurrences that take place around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history is revealed, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel satisfying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on 14 November.