Impressively Eerie Sound Design Aside, undertone is Emotionally Out of Tune
I will see films in 2025 that I will dislike far more than I do writer-director Ian Tuason’s undertone. I doubt I will see many that I will find nearly as disappointing. An audio marvel with crackerjack sound design centered on a strong lead performance delivered by a fearless Nina Kiri, I still found this paranormal horror opus to be shockingly anemic. With a story that goes nowhere and builds to a leaden climax that had me rolling my eyes in annoyance, Tuason’s feature-length debut isn’t very good. Worse, it also made me slightly angry.
Reminiscent of ideas utilized in recent genre favorites like Pontypool, Huesera: The Bone Woman, Skinamarink, and the original Paranormal Activity (the next installment of which Tuason is currently attached to helm), the film attempts to mix religious, social, familial, and traumatic fears in a suitably unnerving, stripped-down fashion. It revolves around Evy Babic (Kiri), the skeptic star of a popular podcast that analyzes spooky recordings with her true-believer partner Justin (Adam DiMarco). The pair record their show remotely, with him on one coast and her on the other. They also like to schedule their sessions to be taped during The Witching Hour, which means she’s currently dialing in just before 3:00 a.m.
A fresh wrinkle complicating their taping schedule is that Evy has had to move back into her childhood home to care for her comatose mother (Michèle Duquet). Even with this stress, the pair soldier on. Their current program involves ten cryptic recordings of a married couple, about to give birth to their first child, dealing with an unseen — but not unheard — anomaly which leads to several increasingly upsetting sleepless nights.
It’s a solid setup, and as the only two people that are seen on-camera throughout are Evy and her mother, every other element is of the audio variety. Sound is its own character, and Tuason and his technical team pull out all the stops. The nifty trick of cutting to absolute silence every time Evy puts on her headphones to record with Justin may not be original, but that does not make it any less effective. His thriller also gets high marks for creating an anxiety-inducing compendium of clicks, shrieks, creaks, gasps, thuds, and all sorts of additional thumps and bumps that couldn’t help but bring a malevolent smile to my face.
But the problems begin early on and only grow in magnitude. There is no character development. While I respect that Tuason wants to conceal certain aspects of Evy’s backstory and the closeness (or potential lack thereof) of her relationship with her dying mother, the overall effect is that it makes her infuriatingly dull. It is only through the strength of Kiri’s committed, physically expressive performance that she even registers at all. While I wholeheartedly applaud her efforts, that does not mean I felt an emotional connection to Evy whatsoever, and that’s no small thing that can be easily dismissed.
Additionally, the entire ebb and flow of the narrative is far too pedestrian and predictable. The pair record. The audio file they’re listening to initially sounds innocuous or unthreatening, only for there to be some disarming audio clues leading to fresh questions that introduce supposedly sinister and uncomfortably unexplainable unforeseen elements. During these sessions, the lights flicker in the house and capture Evy’s attention. Shadows flash on the walls. Creaking floorboards make it sound as if someone is on the stairs or wandering to and from her mother’s bedroom.
The film is also rudimentary in its staging and presentation. I rarely found any of it unnerving, let alone scary. Because the reveals regarding Evy, who she is, and how she feels about her mother’s impending death are divulged more like sudden “gotcha!” twists and not as organic facets of her makeup, none of them are genuine. Who she is, what she was doing before this family crisis struck, or any other information about what life was like for her as a youngster is delivered with any semblance of affecting clarity. It’s all shorthand and innuendo, and, because of that, virtually none of it resonated with me.
I do like the idea that the key to Evy and her mother’s history might be found in an ambiguous voicemail message where the latter urges the former to join them for Sunday Mass at their family church. This could be vital to getting a better idea of who the two are as parent and child. But Tuason frustratingly doesn’t do enough with this idea. It’s there to be there, and not much more than that.
The same goes for all the Catholic iconography that’s littered throughout the house. It’s all right there and easy to see. But other than the usage of a creepy figurine of a heavenly mother smothered in shrieking children, it’s all window dressing. They don’t matter, and they make zero impact.
All of this is a shame. Kiri’s performance is terrific, and the stupendous sound design is deserving of every ounce of praise it is going to get. However, while Tuason’s attempts at restraint are laudable, refusing to introduce satisfying expository elements that could deepen an audience’s emotional connection to Evy struck me as a major mistake. When the third-act twists involving her begin to happen, they’re delivered with all the melodramatic seriousness of a M. Night Shyamalan favorite like The Sixth Sense or Signs, and it doesn’t work. If anything, they are unintentionally laughable.
Tuason’s sonic horror yarn is a prime example of what happens when a motion picture refuses to satisfy its viewer. Small issues become a massive aggravation, and tiny nitpicks magnify into monstrous missteps that lead to exasperated sighs. I do hate to say it, but that’s exactly what happened with me and my relationship to undertone. While I can respect the craft, by the time events reached their ineptly abrupt conclusion I couldn’t have cared less. I just wanted to turn the dial and listen to something, almost anything, else.
Film Rating: 1½ (out of 4)
