undertone Review
Heads up: A24 provided a complimentary ticket for this review. This review goes public on March 21st.
undertone is a bad podcast in the form of a horror movie. While many horror movies are obsessed with becoming “elevated” cerebral horror masterpieces in the likes of Get Out, Midsommar, or Longlegs, to name a few, undertone is obsessed with horror as an experience, using sound to immerse the viewer into a sense of unease and paranoia. The experience amounts to a collective shrug. Immersion alone can’t sustain tension, and undertone frequently mistakes confusion for depth.
Story
Nina Kiri
Credit: Dustin Rabin
Evy (Nina Kiri) lives with her mother (Michèle Duquet), who can no longer eat or drink anything. Meanwhile, Evy and her friend Justin (Adam DiMarco) co-host a podcast called The Undertone (roll credits?). In this podcast, the duo investigates various paranormal mysteries, with Justin playing the believer and Evy the skeptic. When Justin receives an email with 10 sound files of a couple (Keana Lyn Bastidas and Jeff Yung) experiencing paranormal noises in their home, the two decide to jump on FaceTime and record a podcast episode. However, as the two listen to the files, Evy begins to hear noises in her own home, drawing her into fear & paranoia.
Sounds interesting enough. What person doesn’t want to watch a spooky movie filled with spooky noises? Well, here’s the rub: undertone never follows through with the setup. Evy’s skepticism has no impact on the plot or as a character trait. Questions about her doubts, the email's origin, and whether Evy's noises are real or hallucinations remain unanswered. Justin, Evy’s mother, and the rest of the cast feel so underdeveloped that when they stop talking or are offscreen, I forget about them.
Performances
undertone is a movie that rests on Kiri’s shoulders. Other than Duquet, Kiri is one of two people who appear on screen, with Evy’s mother confined to her bed for the majority of the film’s runtime. So, the only emotional cues the audience receives are Kiri’s, and her subdued performance does not work for the film’s ambitions. Evy is dealing with a number of stressors and a non-paranormal psychological unraveling that could have led to a better performance. Even worse, the supporting cast compounds this problem. If you’re going to have one person on screen who’s staring at a screen, can we at least have the supporting cast pick up the slack so I’m not sitting there in silence, waiting for someone to say their line or for something meaningful to happen?
If I had to pick the performances apart in undertone, the chief problem is that, if we’re supposed to be immersed in Evy’s paranoia, a subdued lead actor works against the immersion the film aims for.
Direction
(L-R) Ian Tuason, Nina Kiri
Credit: Dustin Rabin
In his directorial debut, Ian Tuason does a lot well. From the moment the opening credits rolled, I was immersed in the world Tuason creates. We’re pulled into Evy’s point of view as she sits down to record her podcast, putting on her noise-cancelling headphones to block out the world around her. For ten minutes, the world goes quiet as she and Justin discuss the audio files they were sent. That is, until you hear banging all around you. Or did you? That feeling of paranoia is something that Tuason does better than most horror directors I’ve watched lately. He’ll even occasionally pan the camera far enough that the shot mirrors where it began.
That isn’t to say his direction doesn’t have problems. undertone is reminiscent of Presence and Don’t Breathe. All three films are sensory-first experiences that live and die on the audience’s immersion. Presence did this by making the camera the audience’s POV. Don’t Breathe did this through its use of sound as a source of fear. However, unlike those films, Tuason misses a unique opportunity to make something out of Evy’s POV, a first-person POV while she’s recording The Undertone podcast. That way, when she stops recording, the audience can distinguish or, at the very least, draw their own conclusions about what Evy is experiencing.
Writing
Tuason is not committed to investing any time in addressing the stressors that contribute to Evy's psychological state during the film. Evy’s chief stressor, her relationship with her mother, gets paid little more than lip service. Her mother is a body in a bed that we know is religious based on the iconography and what Evy says about her mom, but that’s it. The audience doesn’t even have enough information to gather why she’s sick, what caused the rift in the relationship, or any crucial details that could give us insight into their relationship. Beyond the mother, Tuason never explores what Evy has given up to become her caregiver. Evy has a phone call with a doctor, but that subplot is dropped minutes later. Evy gets a call from her boyfriend at night and returns the next morning. What happened there? Tuason does not feel like telling us.
However, there is some upside to Tuason’s script: the paranoia. This aspect of the script responds to every little bump in the night, every light flicker, and every dark corner. In that sense, Tuason is recreating Evy’s fear for the audience. Otherwise, this is a very disconnected script from Tuason, and I hope Paranormal Activity 8, his next project, is one he leaves someone else to write.
Sound
As one can imagine, the sound in undertone is the best part of the experience, and Tuason and the sound team take great care to craft the film's soundscape. For the duration, the audience is attuned to every sound Evy hears, filtering out background noise with her noise-cancelling headphones. This care extends to the equipment itself, which the film prominently features: the Electro-Voice EV-320, a $500 XLR microphone that can only be used with an audio interface, meaning any podcaster using one is taking sound seriously. The sound mix uses specific speakers to create directional audio, making sounds appear behind you, to your left, above you, and even in places you aren’t expecting them. The best part is that the sound holds up in a standard surround-sound mix, which makes me wonder what a Dolby Atmos screening would reveal.
Cinematography
Visually, the choices are inconsistent. Throughout most of the film, the camera stays still, a deliberate decision by Tuason and executed by cinematographer Graham Beasley to create a sense of stillness that immerses viewers in Evy’s paranoia. However, this doesn’t always succeed, especially when shots repeat, like the panning shot that begins to mirror its starting point. At first, it’s disorienting for the viewer, but it soon becomes predictable. The 2.12:1 aspect ratio adds a strange feel, creating a sense of missing edges and an eerie atmosphere. Conversely, the neutral color grading tended to pull me out of the story, making everything look too similar by the mid-film point. Walls? Brown. Desk? Brown. Only in daylight did the colors start to distinguish themselves.
Wrap-up
undertone is a film for the avid horror fan. I’m not talking about the horror fan who will go to see Scream 7 or The Bride. I’m talking about the horror fans who see a horror film as an experience. Recent examples are Send Help, Primate, and Iron Lung. So, if that’s in your wheelhouse, I recommend you check undertone out. If you’re not, stick to mainline or other indie horror films like Obsession. Or better yet, wait for Tuason’s next film, Paranormal Activity 8.
That film is a perfect fit for Tuason. I know that franchise well. It features spooky sights and sounds to create an atmosphere of fear and paranoia. I can’t wait to see what Tuason does with that film, given what I’ve seen of him here.
Just don’t subject me to another movie featuring a podcaster as the main character. Evy was already bad enough with her ten-minute recording sessions every few days.
Rating: ★★★
Availability
undertone is now available to watch in theaters.
