Ian Tuason’s debut feature Undertone (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video) being the latest example of how the horror genre is a breeding ground for high-ceiling filmmakers. The modestly innovative creeper stars Nina Kiri (The Handmaid’s Tale) in what’s essentially a single-location one-hander that uses brilliant sound design, precision camera movement and negative space to amplify the uncertainty of Whatever The Hell Is Going On Around Here, and the result can be chilling. And for the most part, those strengths outmuscle the less convincing stuff in a movie that aims to exploit some fairly common irrational fears.
UNDERTONE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: This house. It’s full of religious iconography and truly ugly wallpaper. Old lady stuff, for sure. But she won’t live here much longer. Or anywhere, for that matter – she (Michele Duquet) lies in bed, essentially comatose, and her manner of breathing tells us that the time is nigh. Her daughter Evy (Kuri) has moved in to take care of the dying woman, who hasn’t spoken or eaten or even really moved in days. She just breathes long and heavy and soils the bed. Evy feels guilt for wanting it to be all over, a sentiment she shares with her podcasting partner Justin (Adam DiMarco), who we hear but never see. In fact, Evy and her mother are the only faces in this movie, save for the haunted looks on the Christian statues and paintings throughout the home, which we get to study in closeup until their eyes resemble endless inky voids, if they’re not cutting through us like nuclear radiation.
As for that podcast. It’s called Undertone, and Justin introduces it as being about “all things creepy.” He and Evy live in disparate time zones, so she has to record it at 3 a.m., when our rational selves are vulnerable to stillness and darkness – you know, when we start thinking we see Babadooks and mothmen peering from behind curtains. Their shtick is, Justin is the believer and Evy is the skeptic, which tells us she likely doesn’t share her mother’s devout beliefs in Jesus and the devil or whatever. Their current episode stems from an anonymous email with 10 sound files attached. It sure as hell ain’t wise to open them in any context, because in reality they could be computer viruses, and in this movie they’ll probably want to kill you in some horrific manner.
They press record and Justin starts double-clicking them. They include the voices of a couple, Mike (Jeff Yung) and Jessa (Keana Lyn Bastidas), who’s pregnant. He says she’s been talking in her sleep, so he records her to prove it. Seems harmless enough, until it isn’t. She mutters things, and there are weird thumping sounds, children’s nursery rhymes and other stuff in the background, with Justin spinning theories about demonic messages hidden in the sound files if you play them backward (just like we did with our Ozzy Osbourne and Motley Crue records in 1986). Evy finds it increasingly difficult to be the surely-there’s-a-logical-explanation-for-this person, especially as some of the weirdness begins to mirror the weirdness she’s experiencing at 3 a.m. with a slowly dying mother upstairs: Faucets turning themselves on, lights pulsing and the revelation that Evy’s pregnant. Even more troubling, Evy starts falling down dark Wikipedia research holes and mindlessly scribbling on paper with crayons, sure signs that things aren’t right with her, especially in movies like this.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? This don’t-listen-to-the-audio-files! movie draws from technology-based horror like The Ring (don’t watch the tape!) or One Missed Call (don’t answer the phone!), as well as minimalist single-setting fodder a la Paranormal Activity (notably, Tuason will direct the next film in the series) and Skinamarink. It also has shades of Calls, the creepy, audio-only series that director Fede Alvarez spearheaded for Apple TV back in 2021.
Performance Worth Watching: Of course, for an almost-one-hander like Undertone, the one-hand actor has to carry significant dramatic weight, and Kiri is game for it, existing in a shadowy psychological space alongside grief, dread, uncertainty and other gruesome invisible creatures of the night.
Sex And Skin: None.
Our Take: Could it beeeeeeeeeeeeeee… Abyzou? Who’s like, Pazuzu’s cousin or something? Tuason’s technically precise filmmaking is far more effective in manipulating our fears than this screenplay, which flirts with demonic whatnot cribbed from The Exorcist and The Babadook. He struggles to balance the literal/corporeal with the figurative/psychological, evident by a messy third act hampered by logical inconsistencies and a shrugworthy conclusion – but Tuason’s instinct to leave us guessing in a realm of uncertainty is far preferable over a labored, on-the-nose explanation.
Behind the camera, though, the director knows what strings to pull and buttons to push to manipulate us into believing that Something is there when it shouldn’t be. The sound design is the true star here, Tuason exploiting the unease you feel when you don headphones and worry that you won’t hear something important happening outside your noise-canceling bubble. Inexplicable noises blend in with normal ambient sounds in the rear channels, and it reaches enough of a fever pitch near the end that it had my usually stoic cat perked up, twitching his head with every bump and shriek. So Undertone works quite well at home (especially if you have a surround-sound system), the unsettling sounds of the film merging with your own soundscape (in my case, my cat’s yowling habit, or the distant footsteps of a family member in a different part of the house) for an added layer of unease you wouldn’t get with a theatrical presentation.
Shooting in his childhood home, Tuason also makes the most of long, uncomfortable takes, disorienting canted angles and slow pans that force us to stare into darkened corners and doorways, terrified at what might emerge from the blackness – as Kiri routinely looks over her shoulder as if sensing the aforementioned Something, which, unlike my case, is not Only A Cat. No he avoids that cliche, although he does indulge the Only A Dream bromide. You’ll forgive the film its flaws, however, since it’s potent enough in several moments to elicit bona-fide shivers.
Our Call: Some movies try too hard to creep us out, but Undertone just does it. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
