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Over the past few seasons, scary movies has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar intensity as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (Fresh; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that love affairs are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple traveling to a isolated spot together signifies a fresh tier of fright.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a eerie cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his camera work, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright concealed, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, viewed from odd perspectives, or composed in shots with a unsettling amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of confusion that persists as Liz thinks she perceives 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 river flowing all around her, as if she's about to transcend space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took psychedelics; Liz avoids responding directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in any number of directions, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a prolific run for the last year and a half with another movie 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 periphery of the eye) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the tonally distinct serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based scary humor The Monkey. This diversity, combined 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 pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it prioritizes its visceral effect on an viewer over a desire to bend that story into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many current scary films are, they frequently script for theme rather than shooting for instant impact. As a result, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny enigma. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to become vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird things that happen around her, and the role is written and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who mysteriously avoids asking what the hell is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one way or another, the fragility of her more polite smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the phone. Though no specific skeleton key to her traumatic history is revealed, the figure still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness drives home some of its themes in a manner that the more overt messaging of other dating-hell tales don't always achieve: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on 14 November.