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In recent years, scary movies has often explored toxic romance with the same fervor as a doomed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Love-Struck), it's clear that romantic relationships are primarily gory nightmares, and a couple venturing to a isolated location together signifies a fresh tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been a couple for about a year, which we learn early on has signified the period Liz has fled past relationships. Still, she seems hopeful about this one. She believes she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are not as filled with warning signs or as suspiciously idyllic as other current figures in the ill-fated pair genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a somewhat slurred-together accent as he explains some oddities about his ancestral cabin in the woods (like the reality that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They seem at ease together.

Osgood Perkins brings in discord through his shot choices, instead of micro-aggressions or backstory.

Liz and Malcolm's faces are rarely outright hidden, but they're often somewhat obscured, shown from strange angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This creates a pattern of disorientation that persists as Liz believes she perceives faint noises through the house's vents. When she unwinds in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely memorable overlay of the nearby river flowing all around her, like she's about to go beyond reality. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she informs a friend she calls when she's by herself at the lodge. Her friend asks if she did mushrooms; Liz avoids responding directly.

For a while, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed role as the woman in Malcolm's world – appears like it could go in any number of paths, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a forest killer movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a productive run for the past 18 months with an additional film scheduled next year, makes it difficult to discern, both within the story (so many of the most unsettling early moments are moments just blurry or in the corner of the vision) and outside the narrative; his last two films were the stylistically different murderer freakout Longlegs and the Final Destination-ish scary humor The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and spoiler-averse marketing, could make the latest release feel to some like a deceptive trick designed to embellish what is, fundamentally, a pretty simple scary narrative.

Perhaps it's exactly that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the manner it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a desire to twist that plot into a contemporary relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write toward theme rather than filming for instant impact. Consequently, some are lacking original imagery, surprising contrasts or a sense of authentic, uncanny mystery. Keeper possesses each of these, and Perkins knows just how far to advance those elements without allowing the movie to turn into vague mystical self-indulgence.

He also seems to know what a strong grounding element he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to do the typical masterful demo reel of a woman on the verge of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the weird occurrences that happen around her, and the character is scripted and acted with a certain directness. (She's not one of those horror heroines who mysteriously avoids inquiring what the hell is happening.) However Maslany delivers a second level to her performance in her unprotected times: a skeptical flick of her gaze in one way or another, the fragility of her more courteous smiles, the shorthand of both her closeness and quickness to annoyance with her off-screen pal on the call. Though no specific master clue to her painful history is revealed, the character still seems complete.

The same applies of the film 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 compact structure seem gratifying, correct and unlikely to spawn a sequel. That neatness emphasizes some of its ideas in a way that the more overt moralizing of other dating-hell tales do not always achieve: perhaps it requires a mythical horror for the complicated business of relationships to remain so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in theaters on November 14th.