Sundance Review: Plainclothes is a Riveting Paranoia Thriller About Coming Out

Set years before George Michael’s arrest and inspired by the bathroom raids that provoked a moral panic in Mansfield, Ohio, in 1963, Carmen Emmi’s Syracuse-set thriller Plainclothes offers a unique twist on the coming-out genre. Cruising the food court and men’s room at a local mall, young undercover officer Lucas (Tom Blyth) lures men into stalls, getting them to expose themselves before they’re taken down by a cop (John Bedford Lloyd) who is not above slapping a fellow officer on the butt in the gym, a thread the film never quite pulls fully at. 

Told in a non-linear structure, the thriller oscillates between two parallel timelines: one focusing on a New Year’s Eve party with Lucas’ controversial uncle after the death of his father; the other as he conducts police work at the mall. In the earlier timeline, Lucas becomes infatuated with Andrew (Russell Tovey), a middle-aged man who he allows to take things further than what can be prosecuted. Bungling the arrest, he lets Andrew go and in turn is given his phone number to meet up again.

Under pressure from his commanding officer and chief, the task force is ramped up. Inspired by vintage footage from the public restroom raids in suburban Mansfield, Ohio, a third officer (Darius Fraser’s Jeff) is added to the team along with a VHS camera. The judges, we learn, just aren’t throwing the book at these men, instead letting them off with a ticket after prosecuting these cases solely from observation has become difficult.

Set in 1997, a period in which AIDS was becoming less of a death sentence but still an active threat, Plainclothes adopts a paranoid mixed-media approach, shooting in the Academy ratio and often transitioning to a VHS-style aesthetic as Lucas watches, reports, observes, and eventually makes eye contact. The walls eventually close in on him and, in the wake of his father’s funeral, he breaks up with Emily (Amy Forsyth), a flight attendant who seems to have always suspected something was there all along.

Carrying on in secret with Andrew after their initial encounter in the mall restroom, they eventually meet in the darkness of a movie palace before agreeing to see each other again. The film’s structure flipping between his fieldwork, tryst with Andrew, and a family party where the pressure mounts is a little messy and, by design, rough around the edges. Utilizing this hybrid media approach, Emmi, editor Erik Vogt-Nilsen, and cinematographer Ethan Palmer create a jittery paranoid aesthetic that occasionally feels reminiscent of the late Tony Scott.

The film treats Lucas’ coming-out, including the moments where he and Andrew first make love, with an aggressive paranoid energy. It’s only when dancing around his feelings with Emily that the film becomes more sensitive and nuanced. The non-linear structure initially plays somewhat confusing: Lucas has grown facial hair and looks almost like the first man arrested early in the film as a dark remix of OMC’s “How Bizarre” blares in the mall.

A darker take on coming out, Plainclothes has a few familiar twists but ultimately succeeds through its performances and take on the material. The last act effectively ratchets up the tension, bringing the two timelines to a head around some familiar family archetypes. Then again, 1997 was a different time, full of misconceptions and HIV/AIDs PSAs. The film reflects what kind of fears might have existed a few years after Tom Hanks won the Oscar in Jonathan Demme’s groundbreaking, flawed Philadelphia. As far as coming-out films go, Plainclothes, in the tradition of Cruising, treats the revelation with modern sympathy and period paranoia, a throwback to a time before cuddly rom-coms like Love, Simon.

Plainclothes premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

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