A24’s latest is meant to be the scariest movie you’ve ever heard. It’s an interesting concept, but while Undertone delivers some clever sound-centered scares, it fails to truly terrify its audience, unless of course you come in wanting to believe this could all be real.
Undertone Review
It seems like everyone from washed up musicians to your neighbor has a podcast. So I guess it’s only natural demons might try their claws at it too. But like your mom’s best friend, it might be better for everyone if they left it alone. Because not everyone wants to listen to the nonsense.
I’m a big fan of sound design in films, tv shows, and games. Maybe it’s from growing up watching cartoons like Tom and Jerry where the sound gave clues to the wordless actions and feelings happening on screen. Or maybe it’s because I have always loved music. Whatever the case, I fully champion the composers of films and applaud those that create the soundscapes that permeate the stories we see on screen. With its “haunted podcast” premise, Undertone and director Ian Tuason take the time to emphasize the auditory spectacle of it all from clocks ticking to labored breathing of a dying woman. It just doesn’t always work towards the goal of being scary. But I do appreciate the effort.
Evy (Nina Kiri) and Justin (Adam DiMarco) are best friends who co-host a podcast together. Undertone is all about creepy stories they find and set out to debunk in Evy’s case or prove in Justin’s. Due to Justin living in London, when Evy sits down to record Undertone it’s during the witching hour, around 3am. That’s creepy enough but it works for Evy who also is caring for her dying, comatose mother (Michelle Duquet). The opening of the film establishes the stillness of the home, the loneliness of Evy’s life, and the grief that permeates the wallpapered, religious tokens covered walls. One night, Justin reveals that he has received an email with 10 audio recordings about a couple named Jessa and Mike (Keana Lyn Bastidas and Jeff Yung) who were plagued by a demonic entity. Evy is skeptical of the whole situation but Justin believes it’s real, researching nursery rhymes and an obscure demon. When things from the tape start happening in Evy’s home though, she loses the ability to rationalize them away.
Evy is the mirror for the audience, at least those of us who are skeptical about these sorts of hauntings. We are made to be like Evy, above it all until we get slowly sucked into the madness. However, if you’re paying attention she actually explains how Undertone is supposed to work. It’s simple auditory pareidolia, where the brain imposes familiar patterns on reversed phonetic data, sometimes fueled by suggestions of hidden meanings. I’ve never put much stock into the whole, play this backwards and it says something trickery to begin with. And for this skeptic, I heard nothing that Justin “heard” until the sound made it super clear (read: obvious) that this was what they wanted you to get from it. So no, not really scary and besides I already knew the darker side of nursery rhymes.
I think this is why Undertone didn’t do anything for me. Though, the camera work, sound design, and the concept did work at times, not to scare me but to pique my curiosity. Tuason utilizes slow-and-still horror, making you hold your breath and search the corners of the screen for something that may or may not be there. The screen fades at times, leaving you listening to the uneven breaths of a dying woman. It feels like a found-footage film but it’s just the audio. The audio does the heavy lifting here. Complete silence one moment to a loud bang another. Most of the time the ebbing and flowing, the pointedness of sound worked. It was when the tea kettle kept screeching or the demonic happenings got louder but more muddled that it all just became a racket to me as my grandmother would say.
As one of the only physical actors in the film and the only one of those with actual lines, Kiri has to shoulder the burden of carrying Undertone. For a movie like this to work, she needed to be ready to handle anything Tuason would throw her way. Fortunately, she does. She is both caring and angry, alert and weary. As Evy’s mind begins to disassociate and fall prey to the chaos attacking her senses, Kiri falls right down the rabbit hole with her. Despite the relationship she has with her mother being predictable (overly religious parent, slightly rebellious child), Kiri is able to convey the loneliness and grief that comes from watching helpless as a love one dies in front of you. That was expertly handled and heartbreaking to watch. Tuason was drawing on his real life experience of caring for two dying parents and Kiri showed us all what that would feel like.
Verdict
Ultimately, Undertone will be terrifying for certain viewers. Those who have their own hangups with religious symbols or who believe there are hidden messages within hidden messages. People who are sensitive to the idea of demonic chanting and entities could also be deeply affected. But for me, I was fine and I am admittedly a “wuss” when it comes to horror just ask the people who know me well. In fact, one told me I was going to hate this movie because of how scared it would make me. The phone call after the screening went like this “you said I was going to be afraid, I was bored and wanted it to end.” I also looked at this the way I look at Exorcist or The Conjuring, I’m not Catholic so therefore I can be marked safe from demons tampering with my life. Actual villains, or even those like the one in Smile, scare me. Demons? Not so much, maybe because I agree with what Crowley said in Good Omens, that people do far worse things to each other than the demons could ever dream up.
Undertone has an interesting concept and the sound design combined with the slow, methodical camerawork are great, working in tandem to elevate the suspense. But it ramps up things a lot without truly going anywhere, at least until the last 10 minutes when things let loose. All in all, it’s a solid effort from a new filmmaker. I just wonder what would’ve happened if those last moments occurred sooner. Maybe then Undertone would’ve succeeded in scaring me.
Undertone is in theaters now. It is rated R for language with a runtime of 93 minutes.
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