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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together represents a new tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn quickly has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as dotted with red flags or as oddly idyllic as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together way of speaking as he describes some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his camera work, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright concealed, but they're often somewhat blocked, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she did psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the female in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike jumble. Is it a ghost story, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with another movie due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the vision) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a deceptive trick intended to dress up what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what renders Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it prioritizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they often script toward theme rather than filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a feeling of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical excess.

The director also appears 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 verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is written and acted with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids asking what the heck is going on.) Yet Maslany delivers a second level to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem gratifying, appropriate and unlikely to generate a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt messaging of other romantic nightmare stories don't always manage: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in cinemas on November 14th.