"undertone" has promise, but underwhelms

New horror movie “undertone,” created and directed by Ian Tuason in his directorial debut, hit the scene on March 13th to mixed reception.

The film follows Evy and the creation of a new episode of her supernatural podcast “the undertone.” Her co-host, Justin, is sent 10 mysterious audio files and the two make the grave decision to listen to them and document their findings.

The movie's core idea is audio based horror, with not only 10 haunted audio tapes but also using audio editing to find and uncover secrets as well as the characters' awareness being dampened by her headphones. Throughout, there is no visual gore nor any visual jumpscares, but it by no means is an easy horror movie to watch. It keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat, waiting and wondering what the next audio file could possibly contain. The film also holds many still shots, not moving and holding on to certain things for a long while, like focussing on the stairs or the hallway behind Evy.

The best part has to be Nina Kiri who is the actor for Evy and one of the few actors you see in the movie. She does a phenomenal job at a nearly one-woman movie and  is able to perform being haunted and prayed upon by a supernatural force very well.The movie also was made with a budget of only half a million dollars, which for a modern movie is nearly unheard of and the movie uses the money very efficiently.

Style and concept cannot save this movie, though, and it suffers from an immense build up that goes nowhere. The film’s ending has very little pay off, using incredibly over the top gory descriptions to supposedly distill fear into the viewer; however, these descriptions simply come off as edgy and almost juvenile. 

A horror movie is able to use over the top violence well if it feels earned, but you can’t just jump to that from only tense environmental scares. This kind of violence is to be expected of A24 horror films, with 2022’s “Talk To Me” and 2018’s “Hereditary” also having extreme violence but at least attempt to earn this level of violence, “undertone” simply goes for it without any thoughts otherwise.

While it may be one of the weakest horror films to come from A24, it’s definitely still a somewhat scary film as well as a moderately solid film.