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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the rare happy ending (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a new tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we discover quickly 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 initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as suspiciously perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, dry sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he describes some peculiarities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their social discomfort are complementary. They seem at ease together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his shot choices, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely completely concealed, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from strange angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she hears soft noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the nearby stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a companion she phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's world – seems like it could head in multiple directions, its horror elements mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the last year and a half with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and extra-textually; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, paired with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience above a wish to bend that story into a contemporary relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script for message rather than shooting for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those elements without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual masterful demo reel of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the character is scripted and performed with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously sidesteps inquiring what the hell is going on.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her performance in her unguarded moments: a cynical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to annoyance with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular skeleton key to her painful history is revealed, 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 narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its compact structure feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales don't always achieve: maybe it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on 14 November.