The Secrets We Keep

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For this week, we take a look at a whole different type of horror that's far more serious than that of our regular ghouls and goblins of Halloween. This one is about the horrors of World War II, what it meant to be held prisoner in a concentration camp, and the after effects on one's mind. Things don't get too graphic, thankfully, but it's not without a little bit of that torture porn I hate so much. This time much of it is psychological, but we cut off a finger or two here just as well.

Some time after the war, couple Maja (Noomi Rapace) and Lewis (Chris Messina) are trying to get their lives back on track after years of difficulty with Maja having a big set of personal problems. Things are going swimmingly, and the couple is happy along with their son, Patrick (Jackson Dean Vincent) until one day, Maja becomes distracted by someone. Their neighbor, Thomas (Joel Kinnaman), as far as Maja's memory serves her, is supposedly a Nazi who once tortured her and family among several others during the war.

Upon recognizing Thomas, Maja knocks out and kidnaps him while pretending to have car trouble. She then brings him to their house in the trunk of their car, and brings up her brutal history to Lewis that she's kept all these years. It turns out Lewis knew about her fears and nightmares that lead to her personal problems, but never quite the full truth about the source. Together, they bound and gag the suspect, and keep him in the basement while trying to maintain a seemingly ordinary life for their son. Although I must say, it's hard for me to believe the kid doesn't clue in to what's going on. That part of the movie is actually somewhat ridiculous.

The concept of keeping someone bound and gagged in the basement isn't entirely original. However, I will say that I enjoyed the details involved. It begs the question of how you would deal with someone who you suspect once made your life a living hell, using a Nazi as the person in question; perhaps the easiest group of people for the general public to hate. The film keeps you guessing as to whether or not Thomas is who he says he is, and that's enough. But things get even more complex when we learn about Thomas' family who, even potentially associated with a Nazi, are trying to start a new, post-war life - just like Maja and Lewis.

I don't think that this was a title ever meant for theaters, so with that said, it's pretty forgivable for its overall unoriginality. When you boil it all down, things do become somewhat predictable, and although the film doesn't exactly insult its audience, it asks us to buy into some pretty stupid stuff. For me, once again, I can't get over the son of the household just going about his business while some guy is being held in the basement. Even taking the neighborhood into consideration, you'd think things like the sound of gunfire from a local house just might trigger something. I think through the whole move there's about one half-assed search of the house.

This is another one of those titles that I'm not really sure how to feel about. I enjoy the concept well enough, and how the film keeps you guessing as to Thomas' real identity, but I can guarantee that it's gonna be more predictable for others than myself, and there's a lot of tropes here that have been used time and time again. It asks quite a bit of the audience to buy into certain things, but the atmosphere is fairly chilling and I have to admit that the ending is actually pretty interesting and dark and is actually in the way of how I wanted to see things go down, so I'm not really dissatisfied. But I am still just mildly entertained. It's nothing mind-blowing, just an interesting take on a kidnapping movie.

​3/5

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