Spiritual Elements<\/p>\n
Evy\u2019s mother is a devout Catholic. Almost every wall in her home features a cross or a religious painting, and by her bedside, her reading glasses sit on an open Bible. We see a picture that reads, in a nice bit of foreshadowing, \u201cChildren are a heritage from the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n
Evy has a voice message from her mother in happier times\u2014Mama imploring Evy to attend Mass with her. \u201cI\u2019m praying for you,\u201d Mama says on the message, and Evy plays that particular phrase repeatedly. We learn that Mama also asked Evy to pray with her, but Evy always made excuses why she couldn\u2019t. Too busy, she\u2019d say, or too tired.<\/p>\n
Perhaps if Evy would\u2019ve taken faith more seriously, she might\u2019ve been better prepared for Obyzouth, the apparent main antagonist in Undertone.<\/p>\n
Evy and Justin hear the name invoked in the recordings\u2014spoken backward by one of the files\u2019 creators. Justin tells us that Obyzouth is an ancient demon mentioned in a host of religious documents, including in Judaism and Islam. But Justin especially calls out a \u201cChristian\u201d text called the Testament of Solomon, written (Justin says) in the first century A.D.<\/p>\n
(Note: The Testament of Solomon is indeed a real thing, though the date and the religious affiliation of its authors are much debated. In it, King Solomon is given a magic ring from the Archangel Michael that gives him the power to control\u2014or destroy\u2014demons.)<\/p>\n
We\u2019re told that Obyzouth has a particular interest in mothers and babies: She torments and possesses the former while killing the latter, and most of the horrors we hear involve that most precious (and here, most perverted) of earthly relationships. She was reputed to be behind stillborn babies and miscarriages, but Undertone pushes her role into a darker space: Justin alleges that the demon at one point possessed the statue of a Catholic saint\u2014which then quickly became the object of diabolical devotion. (The skulls of babies, inverted crosses carved into the foreheads, were supposedly presented to the statue as an offering.)<\/p>\n
Evy, we learn, is pregnant. And her apparent desire to not be pregnant\u2014as suggested by some destructive choices she makes after learning about the pregnancy\u2014perhaps opens her up to the demon\u2019s influence.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to determine just what sort of impact Mama\u2019s Catholicism may have on the demon: We hear someone muttering Hail Mary prayers in Mama\u2019s room\u2014prayers that stop when Evy flicks on the light. Could it have been Mama, near death as she is, somehow trying to protect her daughter? Or was it the demon herself saying the prayers as a form of mockery? We don\u2019t know for sure. But in one of the recordings, a woman says that a dark, supernatural presence also said a few Hail Marys.<\/p>\n
Undertone is saturated with other supernatural imagery and mentions, from ghostly entities to demonic faces appearing on screens to children (and adults) summoning diabolic beings via nursery rhymes played backward. Faucets turn on inexplicably. Loud bangs are heard. Lights flicker and pop. And Mama sometimes seems to move around more than she ought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spiritual Elements Evy\u2019s mother is a devout Catholic. Almost every wall in her home features a cross or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-530410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}