The cinematic horror of seeing something terrifying can become predictable. In Undertone, it\u2019s the nightmare of hearing something truly terrifying that engulfs the audience in new fears.<\/p>\n
Sound is everything in Undertone. Throughout her day, Evy (Nina Kiri, The Handmaid\u2019s Tale) is listening to her sick mother (Mich\u00e8le Duquet) breathing, with the constant knowledge that the soft sound will become a death rattle soon enough. Her only times of silence come when she puts her noise-cancelling headphones or when she records a new episode of Undertone, the supernatural podcast she cohosts with her old friend, Justin (Adam DiMarco, The White Lotus).<\/p>\n
The show\u2019s format is pretty simple, with Justin playing true believer and Evy donning the mantle of skeptic as they delve into a series of internet mysteries. With her mother virtually comatose, the show is Evy\u2019s only reliable contact with the outside world, and it\u2019s all remote. Justin lives far away, and even the people in her life nearby \u2013 her doctor, her absentee boyfriend \u2013 only exist on the other end of a phone. Her life is a testament to the loneliness of modern connection, and when Justin suggests a weird email containing 10 strange audio files as the subject of the next show, of course she leaps on it.<\/p>\n
Undertone may be being released by A24, but it has all the hallmarks of its production company, Canadian lo-fi, low-budget experts Black Fawn Films. The indie studio behind twisted noir The Oak Room<\/a> and haunted crime drama I\u2019ll Take Your Dead<\/a> has a particular skill for turning limited resources into truly unforgettable thrills and chills. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the debut feature from writer\/director Ian Tuason. All he\u2019s got is two actors onscreen, one of whom never moves; a handful of voices over Evy\u2019s headphones; a single location in Evy\u2019s mother\u2019s house; and the incredible combination of cinematographer Graham Beasley and a sound department led by designer David Gertsman and composer Shanika Lewis-Waddell.<\/p>\n There\u2019s often nothing there in Beasley\u2019s framing, but instead a suggestion of something. After all, why bother with a tacky jump scare when the audience freaks itself out through staring too long into negative space? When the camera does move, it glides in an uncanny manner and settles at the wrong angle. Depth of field shifts in an unnerving fashion, making you wonder whether an innocuous household object is not as ordinary as it seems, while the audio files play in stark opposition to what\u2019s happening in the room. Tuason, Beasley, and the sound team practice restraint and understatement so that when they do indulge in the more traditional visual tics of a horror movie, they have that much greater impact.<\/p>\n But none of this would be so effective without the only speaking onscreen performer giving the story a human side, and Kiri is quietly stunning in the part. The slowly escalating fear created through misdirection and those damned audio files, with their backwards messages and sinister nursery rhymes, seep into her performance, as the recording sessions for the show become increasingly nightmarish.<\/p>\n Undertone crawls under your skin and through your ears because of its eerie juxtaposition of sound and vision. When there\u2019s a loud banging sound, you\u2019re always guessing whether it\u2019s in the recordings or in the house, and as Evy and Justin start to piece together the mystery, the chilling possibility is raised that it might be both. A testament to the adage that a good filmmaker can make anything out of nothing, Undertone should go in your playlist now.<\/p>\n Undertone<\/p>\n 2026, R, 93 min. Starring Nina Kiri, Mich\u00e8le Duquet. Voices by Adam DiMarco, Keana Lyn Bastidas, Jeff Yung.<\/p>\n \u2b50\u2b50\u2b50<\/p>\n Rating: 3 out of 5.<\/p>\n