It’s hard not to think about Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” when discussing the premise of Carmine Emmi’s new dramatic pseudo-thriller Plainclothes. The pressure of feeling under surveillance for just living your true life. Our main character, Lucas, employed as the “watcher”, who slowly unravels under the intense nature of his job. The concern that the police he works for can see right through him. The even bigger concern that the “victim” he falls in love with can see his true self as well.

Plainclothes could have easily been a junky predictable thriller, but through Emmi’s very specific lens (literally), it finds an incredibly unique way to further emphasize the way queer people can feel when trapped in the closet or forced in it. Set in 1997, Lucas (the riveting Tom Blyth) works as an undercover agent in Syracuse to track down and entrap homosexual men in mall bathrooms, catching them with body cameras with the intentions to perform sexual acts. Beyond the depraved morality of his position and despite how well he is at the job, Lucas’ secret is that he, too, is closeted. It’s not until a man named Andrew enters his scenario (played by the charming as hell Russell Tovey) when due to real feelings surfacing, Lucas botches his sting and lets him free without letting him know the truth behind their interaction.

Thus begins a secret affair that Lucas must keep secret from his job, his mother (the always lovely Maria Dizzia), and even his bullish extended family, who he shares pivotal scenes with during an intercutting flash-forward at an upcoming Thanksgiving. He also keeps most of his identity secret from Andrew, referring to himself by the false identity of his deceased father’s name. The only person in his life that he has shared any bit of himself to is his ex-girlfriend, Emily (Amy Forsyth), whose reasoning for their failed relationship is due to them both coming to terms with their own true identities.

The late-90s setting is more than intentional. As director, Emmi’s specific eye is include handheld, point-of-view VHS-style as a way to reference both Lucas’ body cam optics, the feeling that every moment is being recorded and documented, the frame being both on him and Andrew and also from his perspective, his flashes of memory often being depicted through this aesthetic. But also, the VHS-vision, for those who grew up before the age of the internet, can evoke a very tender feeling of nostalgia, as many of the memories we had were through “home movies”. It can often be a perfect way to depict Lucas’ longing to be back in a time when things were simpler, back when he wasn’t haunted by his own true identity, and a time before his father’s death when his small family unit felt happier.

For the most part, Plainclothes doesn’t do anything terribly new as a secrets and lies style narrative, but it remains nonetheless thrilling thanks to Emmi’s behind the camera creativity and Blyth and Tovey’s electrically-charged chemistry. It becomes hard not to root for both of these characters’ happiness, even when they get in over their heads to the point of heated verbal exchanges and irrational decisions. Emmi’s thriller feels like the type of steamy 90s thriller we used to get, though with a modern perspective of telling it through the eyes of queer people in a way that could have only been made by a studio today.