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In recent years, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a pair venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a new tier of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with warning signs nor as oddly perfect as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some oddities about his family-owned forest retreat (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives close by). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his shot choices, instead of micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom outright concealed, but they're often partially obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a trend of disorientation that continues as Liz believes she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely memorable superimposition of the nearby stream flowing all around her, like she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the female in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its horror elements mixed together in a surreal jumble. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the last year and a half with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to discern, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just out of focus or in the periphery of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and secretive marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to dress up what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple horror story.

Perhaps it's that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to twist that plot into a modern love allegory. As smart as so many contemporary scary films are, they frequently write toward theme instead of shooting for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into abstract woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to recognize what a powerful grounding element he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the typical virtuoso showcase of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz does get alarmed by the strange occurrences that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected times: a cynical glance of her eyes in one way or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen 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 complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel satisfying, appropriate and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness emphasizes some of its themes in a way that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell tales don't always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on November 14th.