John Carlucci | Through the Shattered Lens

2006’s Hidden Secrets takes place over the course of one very long weekend.

The death of their friend Chris has reunited a group of acquaintances, who gather for the funeral and then end up staying with Chris’s sister, Sherry (Tracy Melchior), for the weekend. The men gather on her roof and hammer tiles. The women …. well, for the most part, the women are just portrayed as being catty and judgmental.

For instance, Rhonda (Autumn Paul), who is married to Christian book author Harold (Gregg Brinkley), is offended that Gary (John Schneider) is doing stem cell research and is a Jewish agnostic who spends most of his time challenging Rhonda’s super-strict interpretation of the Bible. Interestingly enough, considering that this is a Pureflix film, Rhonda is not portrayed in a positive light and Gary usually gets the better of her in their arguments. Rhonda even apologizes at the end for being so judgmental. Of course, since this is a Pureflix film, Gary still ends up converting.

Pastor Jeremy (David A.R. White) is dating reporter Rachel (Staci Keanan). Rachel suspects that Jeremy is still in love with his ex-girlfriend, Sherry. Rachel is correct. You have to feel bad for Rachel, who certainly deserved better than she got in this movie. Jeremy and Rachel end up sharing a bed at Sherry’s house, which freaks Jeremy out because he’s all about abstinence.

Michael (Corin Nemec) is a gay Christian who practices celibacy and whose main function seems to be to offer people advice.

Anthony (Sean Sedgwick) is a rough and tumble guy who shows up with his latest girlfriend, Sally (Rachael Lampa), and who takes her out dancing for her birthday, even though Rhonda says that Christians shouldn’t dance.

The film follows these characters over the weekend, basically doing a Big Chill sort of thing. Rhonda judges everyone. Gary is sarcastic. Jeremy is torn between Sherry and Rachel. The night of dancing for Sally’s birthday turns into an extended scene where Anthony, Jeremy, and Harold take to the stage and perform a song. It all wraps up with everyone confessing their fears during a church service and I have to admit that I felt sorry for all the people at the church who probably didn’t have the slightest idea why one group of people suddenly hijacked the service to discuss their own problems.

As far as PureFlix films go, this one was well-made and it actually did have some potential. No one was completely right and no one was completely wrong. The main message seemed to be accept and love one another. That said, it also had some fairly serious flaws. John Schneider doesn’t give a bad performance but he was still miscast as a Jewish abortionist. I love Corin Nemec and he gave one of the better performances in Hidden Secrets but the film used his character to promote the destructive “ex-gay” movement and it’s difficult not to be bothered by that. And finally, the resolution of Sherry/Jeremy/Rachel love triangle left me feeling that Jeremy was essentially a terrible, self-absorbed person. I don’t think that was what the film was going for but, regardless….

Hidden Secrets is an uneven film, to say the least. At its best, it made me miss some of my old friends. It’s been a while since we’ve all gotten together. Hopefully, when we next see each other, it won’t be at another funeral.

I’ve sat through a bunch of paranoia “documentaries”/propaganda, movies where somebody thinks they are the first person to discover the sky is blue, and watched too many reviews of Internet horror films this year. In particular, I remember one piece of propaganda masquerading as a documentary on Netflix that said if you take your kid down the cereal aisle, then it is like shooting heroin into their veins. As a result, I am pretty apathetic about this music video.

At the end of the day, it’s well-done. There is another version of this music video that uses the Unfriended (2014) screenshare-style that even references Chatroulette in 2014 like that movie did. I prefer that version. I think it’s more clever and to the point.

I think films like this are counterproductive, but if are going to watch it, then download it so you can look at it more carefully. They stuck in some Easter eggs that you are likely to miss if you can’t take it frame-by-frame. YouTube just doesn’t have that kind of fine-grain control. A couple of examples are the board they are writing on that says “Sustainable Earth” at the top of it and the actual words on the notepad that the guy is drawing a penis on.

I wish I had more to say. It’s one of those things that you’ll either love or think is pretentious garbage. There isn’t much middle ground in my opinion aside from appreciating the attention to detail that went into making it.

The directors of this music video are probably best known for their pornographic music video they did for Taggart And Rosewood called Drone Boning that was shot using a drone. It earned them a nomination at the SXSW Film Festival.

Enjoy!