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Concealed is undoubtedly a movie of two halves. The first half is an adequately captivating mystery thriller and the second half Well, I’ll get to that later.
The opening of the film is quite brave. We get to see Max (Simon Lyndon) and his girlfriend Sallie (Nadia Townsend) getting out of a taxi and heading towards a dark, wooded area right next to their house. The camera follows them as they walk, sometimes using a stalking point of view, alluding to a stalker hiding in the woods. They make it to the house, but something does not feel right. Sallie seems furious at Max, there’s an unusual stuffed elephant in Sallie’s bag and she takes a phone call in private while closing the door to the bedroom, which is strange. Come morning, she’s gone.
After this, the movie continues with Max trying to track down his missing girlfriend. There is a story to be pieced together an arms dealer, murderous conflict diamonds, and straying Deep Blue Seas. As the story unfolds, the casual disappearance becomes more and more complex than Max, or the audience could have imagined.
Though the Concealed movie does not quite hit the mark in regard to content, pacing and cinematography make it a watchable thriller. The film itself does not offer much considering the budget at hand but does manage to provide some feeling of atmosphere, particularly through a poorly handled unsaturated color palate.
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Concealed leaves the audience little to no room for relaxation. While one scene contains a proper resolution, a transition to the next one usually takes over, and the cuts themselves are extremely fast-paced. While this serves the purpose of distraction, and keeping the blood pumping, it can at times be quite startling. This is evident in Simon Lyndon’s performance where the audience is left to sort through fir themselves, the expectation that comes with the character’s name appears to have been lost in adoption. He, however, is mostly tight but there are moments when Max overreacts and seems to rather ignore the gravity of the situation. Whether the blame lies with editing, an incomprehensible script, or pacing is open to debate.
Such critiques do not matter much, though, as the second half of the movie is, in my opinion, where it escalates into chaos.
Where the first half is relatively linear in structure, with Max tracking down his missing love, the second part adds two new storylines. I will not reveal what they are, as they are too far into the movie and are most likely spoilers for anyone reading this, but what I will say is that they significantly lessen the impact of the film’s pacing.
Although at least one of the side stories does relate back to the central storyline, it is unfortunate that a far less intriguing tale has to be told. ORALLY But are totally irrelevant.
All of these side stories have one thing in common: they suffer from the main issue of introducing family drama into a film called Concealed, which should be a straightforward thriller. Adding any element is not bad in and of itself, but there’s only so much room to develop secondary characters and subplots in a film that’s only 80 minutes long.
These additions make the film less effective and slow its pace without adding anything important. There simply are not enough minutes in the film for all these relationships that evolve throughout, and focusing tightly on the amateur-detective-thriller sub-genre would have surely contributed to the second half being stronger.
Concealed shows great promise in its opening minutes, but fails to deliver in an overstuffed final act. It’s not a total flop by any means and it is quite enjoyable for the first 45 minutes. But overall, it comes as one of the most damaging pieces of art to watch.
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