Review: UNDERTONE

 by Rob DiCristino

This is why you shouldn’t start a podcast.

Every film textbook I’ve ever owned includes a chapter on the power of cinematic sound. “Music and sound effects are fifty percent of every movie,” they’ll invariably say, and while composers and audio engineers rarely get the recognition afforded to actors, directors, and production designers, that stack of textbooks on my bookshelf is correct. Think about how lame the skateboard chase in Back to the Future would be without Alan Silvestri’s iconic theme thundering in the background. Think about how artificial the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park would seem without Gary Rydstrom’s legendary blend of screeches, cackles, rumbles, and roars. Think about the warmth you feel in your soul when you hear Indiana Jones punch a Nazi. Hell, think about Star Wars. Like, any of it. With all due respect to the great artists of the Silent Era (Era), movies without sound are hardly movies at all, and as projection formats like IMAX and Dolby Atmos grow more sophisticated, the influence of sound on our cinematic experience only grows more powerful.

Ian Tuason’s Undertone is an ambitious exercise in that power, a two-handed chamber piece about a paranormal podcaster (Nina Kiri as Evy) who discovers a horrifying connection between her dying mother (Michele Duquet) and her co-host’s (Adam DiMarco as Justin) latest case study. Evy’s normally the Scully to Justin’s Mulder on their podcast: Most episodes begin with Justin presenting evidence of ghostly phenomena that Evy will then debunk with logic and reason. This week’s case, however, is a little harder to explain: An anonymous listener has submitted a series of voice notes chronicling one young couple’s (Keana Lyn Bastidas and Jeff Yung) possession by a demonic entity with roots in children’s folk songs like “Ring Around the Rosy” and “Baa Baa, Black Sheep.” Evy initially holds to her skepticism, but as her catatonic mother’s behavior grows erratic — and the reality of her own unwanted pregnancy starts to sink in — she’s forced to admit that there just might be something sinister at play. Worse, she might be its next target.

There’s plenty of convoluted lore to unpack over Undertone’s eighty-five minutes — get ready to examine hidden messages in reversed audio tracks for, well, a while! — but what clearly interests freshman writer/director Tuason the most is atmosphere: His film plays out entirely in Evy’s childhood home, and she’s the only character we both see and hear on screen. Justin joins in over Zoom audio — he’s somewhere in the UK, which explains why they record the podcast around 3 AM EST — and Evy ignores all but one call from her boyfriend, Darren (Ryan Turner). In short, we’re alone with Evy most of the time, with periodic visits to her mother’s bedside breaking up the long, quiet stretches we spend watching her listen to things. Cinematographer Graham Beasley embraces wide angles to exaggerate her solitude and slow, deliberate pans to guide our attention to the house’s darker crevices. Though it does indulge in its share of jump scares, Undertone is all about the waiting. The listening. The subtle movements you swear you saw just a second ago.

We may spend most of Undertone staring at stucco ceilings and empty hallways, but what the film lacks in visual texture it more than makes up for with a soundscape that is both intimate and expansive. As Evy listens intently to each new audio file, the line between what she’s hearing and the space around her begins to blur. Soon enough, we’re starting to wonder: Was that loud thud on the recording or in Evy’s kitchen? Is that Justin’s voice or the man on the tape? Why does the camera keep drifting over to that closet? How does the ghost lady know the song that Evy’s mother sang to her as a child? Undertone’s narrative may not amount to much — coherence starts leaking around the thirty-minute mark, and by the end we’ve fully entered Silent Hill territory — but there’s a kitchen-sink playfulness to Tuason’s experimentation that helps us forgive his parade of undercooked cliches and half-thoughts. Undertone is dynamic enough to reward a surround-sound theatrical viewing — or, for the real sickos, a 4K laptop and a good pair of headphones.

For all its earnest enthusiasm, Undertone is more of a curiosity than a finished product, and it pales in comparison to similar efforts like Red Rooms or Skinamarink. Nina Kiri (The Handmaid’s Tale) is too busy scowling and shrieking to give Evy much interiority, and far too many story threads — Justin’s complicity in the chaos his discovery unleashes, for example — go unexplored. Without that depth, Undertone starts to grate after a while, and the rapt attention it demands inevitably becomes exhausting. To his credit, Tuason does manage a few haunting images — one bleeding face on a TV screen has stuck with me since my screening — and he’s craftsman enough not to telegraph all the best scares with the obnoxious startle cues so many horror directors use as crutches. Undertone would have made a great short, actually; Tuason’s tricks would feel innovative without wearing out their welcome. Oh, well. At least this film has the wit and wisdom to make fun of podcasters. Those people really are the worst.

Undertone hits U.S. theaters today, March 13th.