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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has often delved into toxic romance with the same fervor as a cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's clear that love affairs are primarily gory nightmares, and a pair traveling to a isolated location together represents a fresh level of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover quickly has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are neither as dotted with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he describes some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear at ease together.

Osgood Perkins brings in tension through his camera work, rather than micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright concealed, but they're often partially blocked, viewed from strange angles, or composed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she hears faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay 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 left alone at the cabin. Her friend asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's supposed status as the female in Malcolm's world – seems like it could go in any number of paths, its frightening components blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a really bad trip? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific run for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, makes it difficult to tell, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the periphery of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could make the latest release feel to some like a shell game designed to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the way it prioritizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to bend that plot into a modern love allegory. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently write for theme rather than shooting for immediacy. As a result, some are starved for original imagery, unexpected juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses all of this, and Perkins understands just how far to push those elements without allowing the movie to turn into vague woo-woo self-indulgence.

The director also appears to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of oblivion. Liz does get freaked out by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain straightforwardness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably avoids asking what the heck is going on.) However Maslany provides a additional layer to her performance in her unprotected times: a cynical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the abbreviated of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no specific master clue to her traumatic past is revealed, the figure still feels complete.

The same applies of the movie as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as narratively ambitious as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper concludes, its tight confines seem satisfying, correct and unlikely to generate a sequel. That tidiness emphasizes some of its themes in a manner that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories don't always achieve: perhaps it requires a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• The film arrives in cinemas on 14 November.