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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; 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 traveling to a isolated spot together represents a new tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy 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 about a year, which we learn quickly has marked the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with red flags nor as oddly perfect as other recent figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright hidden, but they're frequently partially blocked, viewed from strange angles, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an deeply unforgettable overlay of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a wish to twist that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write toward theme instead of shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected juxtapositions or a feeling of authentic, strange mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to push those elements without permitting the movie to become abstract mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the brink of doom. Liz does get freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected moments: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more polite grins, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

That's true of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem gratifying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare tales don't always manage: perhaps it takes a mythical horror for the messy affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in cinemas on 14 November.