Tom Blyth is an undercover cop with a secret of his own in tense Plainclothes trailer

“At his mother’s New Year’s Eve party Lucas, a young police officer, loses a letter no one was ever meant to read,” the film’s logline reads. “Amid the backdrop of the suffocating family party, the search for the letter unlocks memories of a past he’s tried to forget: months earlier, while working undercover in a mall bathroom, Lucas arrested men by seducing them. But when he encounters Andrew (Russell Tovey), everything changes. What begins as another setup becomes something far more electric and intimate. As their secret connection deepens and police pressure to deliver arrests intensifies, Lucas finds himself torn between duty and desire. With time running out and his past closing in, Plainclothes builds toward a New Year’s Eve reckoning where everything he’s buried threatens to erupt.”

“Erupt” is a fitting word to describe this trailer. The tone is incredibly tense, as images from Lucas’ past and present flash over a taut and anxiety-provoking score. Emmi certainly isn’t romanticizing the history he’s portraying, despite the against-all-odds love story at its core. Still, the film does promise to offer some catharsis by its end. “I want to leave the audience with a feeling of hope,” Emmi told Deadline ahead of Plainclothes‘ Sundance premiere. “So many times, these stories, I feel like end in tragedy. And from the beginning, that was exactly what I didn’t want to do… I wanted our production to be a symbol of hope for maybe someone who was struggling with not even their sexuality, but any secret that they had. That was the goal for me.”

Plainclothes premieres in theaters September 19.