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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often delved into unhealthy relationships with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a secluded location together represents a new level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover early on has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, 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 nor as suspiciously idyllic as other current characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she hears faint noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the adjacent stream flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with another movie scheduled 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 corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to twist that plot into a contemporary love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write toward theme instead of filming for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking original imagery, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, uncanny enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to become abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the usual virtuoso demo reel of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably avoids asking what the heck is happening.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her gaze in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no particular skeleton key to her traumatic past awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as rich as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious messaging of other dating-hell stories don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film arrives in cinemas on November 14th.