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In recent years, horror cinema has frequently delved into unhealthy relationships with the similar fervor as a doomed dating app. Starting with engineered first encounters (Fresh; Partner) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's evident that love affairs are mostly gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a secluded spot together represents 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 scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn 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 early scenes together are not as dotted with red flags nor as oddly idyllic as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, dry comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled 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 at ease together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his shot choices, rather than subtle hostilities or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are seldom completely concealed, but they're often partially obscured, shown from strange perspectives, or framed in shots with a disconcerting amount of empty space. This establishes a trend of confusion that continues as Liz thinks she perceives faint noises through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's luxurious bath, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay 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 phones when she's left alone at the cabin. Her acquaintance asks if she did psychedelics; Liz avoids responding straightforwardly.

For a while, Keeper – named for Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could head in multiple paths, its frightening components mixed together in a dreamlike mix. Is it a ghost story, a forest killer 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, makes it difficult to discern, both in-movie (so many of the most unsettling early moments are instances just blurry or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the tonally distinct murderer thriller Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish horror comedy The Monkey. This diversity, combined with Keeper's mysterious and spoiler-averse ad campaign, could cause the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick intended to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Maybe it is that. But one aspect of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its visceral effect on an audience above a desire to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As smart as so many contemporary horror movies are, they frequently script toward message instead of filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are starved for original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of genuine, strange mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how much to advance those elements without allowing the movie to turn into vague woo-woo excess.

He also seems to know what a powerful stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who isn't called upon to perform the usual virtuoso demo reel of a woman on the verge of doom. Liz does get alarmed by the weird things that take place around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular straightforwardness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who inexplicably sidesteps inquiring what the heck is happening.) Yet Maslany provides a second level to her performance in her unguarded moments: a skeptical flick of her eyes in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and speed to irritation with her unseen pal on the phone. Though no particular master clue to her painful past awaits, the character still feels complete.

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 standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines feel satisfying, appropriate and improbable to spawn a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its ideas in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other romantic nightmare stories do not always manage: maybe it takes a fable-like horror for the messy business of relationships to stay so neatly kept.

• Keeper debuts in cinemas on 14 November.