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In recent years, scary movies has often explored toxic romance with the similar fervor as a cursed dating app. From engineered first encounters (New; Partner) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together signifies a new level of fright.

So it's not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the recently released and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we discover early on has signified the time Liz has fled past relationships. Nevertheless, she seems hopeful about this one. She thinks she understands Malcolm pretty well, and their initial moments together are not as dotted with warning signs or as oddly perfect as other current characters in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled way of speaking as he explains some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

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

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright hidden, but they're frequently somewhat blocked, shown from odd angles, or composed in shots with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a trend of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she hears soft noises through the house's air ducts. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable superimposition of the nearby river rushing all around her, like she's about to transcend reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a friend she phones when she's left alone at the lodge. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer straightforwardly.

Initially, Keeper – named for Liz's supposed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in multiple directions, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer movie, or just a really bad experience? Perkins, a master of scares who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, complicates efforts to tell, both within the story (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) 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, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a fairly straightforward horror story.

Maybe it is exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so invigorating is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an audience over a wish to twist that story into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary scary films are, they often write toward theme rather than filming toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, surprising juxtapositions or a sense of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper has each of these, and Perkins understands just how much to push those elements without allowing the movie to become abstract mystical excess.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the typical masterful demo reel of a female on the verge of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids asking what the heck is happening.) However Maslany delivers a additional layer to her acting in her unprotected moments: a cynical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her familiarity and quickness to annoyance with her unseen friend on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her traumatic past awaits, the character still feels fully realized.

That's true of the movie as a complete piece, too. It's not as complex as Sinners or as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for innovative horror. But when Keeper concludes, its compact structure seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a follow-up. That neatness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious messaging of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: maybe it requires a mythical horror for the complicated affair of relationships to remain so neatly kept.

• Keeper arrives in cinemas on 14 November.