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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a secluded location together represents a fresh tier of terror.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and highly secretive horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we learn early on has signified the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are neither as filled with red flags or as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he explains some peculiarities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his camera work, instead of subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are rarely completely concealed, but they're often partially obscured, viewed from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a unsettling amount of empty space. This creates a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she perceives soft sounds through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's luxurious bath, there's an deeply memorable overlay of the adjacent stream rushing all around her, as if she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she phones when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's life – appears like it could go in any number of directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are moments just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and outside the narrative; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what renders Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience above a desire to twist that story into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often script toward theme instead of filming for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of genuine, strange enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those components without allowing the movie to turn into abstract mystical excess.

He also seems to recognize what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to do the usual masterful demo reel of a woman on the brink of doom. Liz becomes freaked out by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the hell is going on.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected times: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more polite smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past is revealed, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as rich as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's leading examples for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem satisfying, correct and improbable to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare tales don't always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the complicated affair of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film debuts in theaters on 14 November.