Undertone was made and marketed as a prestige horror film set in the nascent world of documentary podcasts. Everything about the promotion for this movie was focused on the sound design. Tempted though I was to wait for the DVD so I could watch this with headphones, the timing worked out for a relatively small and sparsely attended screening.
So let’s take it from the top, shall we?
We lay our scene in the home of a woman (we’ll call her “Mama Babic”, played by Michèle Duquet), a devout old Catholic lady who lay comatose and slowly dying. Our protagonist is her daughter (Evangeline “Evy” Babic, played by Nina Kiri), who’s obligingly come back home to provide her mother with the necessary palliative care. While this naturally puts a damper on Evy’s professional and social life, she still works with an overseas partner (Justin, voiced by Adam DiMarco) to record and produce a weekly podcast.
The gist is that Evy and Justin examine various paranormal happenings and urban legends. Justin plays the tinfoil-hatted true believer while Evy plays the skeptic. The plot gets going when Justin receives an anonymous e-mail with ten audio clips attached. The clips are played in sequence on the air, and paranormal shenanigans ensue.
Quite tellingly, this is the feature debut of writer/director Ian Tuason, who initially developed this script as a radio play. Even more tellingly, this is the same guy who was recently hired to try and revive the Paranormal Activity franchise. Seriously, this movie is so deeply entrenched in the same lane as PA that it’s physically painful.
The camera never leaves the house. We only ever see two characters in the entire movie, and one of them spends the entire movie in a goddamn coma. Everyone else is only present in voice-over, and the vast majority of scares and teases are done through sound effects. There’s nothing in this movie more visually complex than a camera tilt. The film was made on a reported budget of only $500K, and it looks like it.
To be entirely fair, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The sound design is undeniably effective, Kiri deserves a ton of credit for anchoring the film on her own, and all the voice acting is superb. Unfortunately, we’re spending the entire movie in the home of a terminally ill senior lady who was an overbearing Catholic in life, which doesn’t leave much in the production design to look at.
From start to finish, it’s perfectly obvious that the emphasis here is on the atmosphere. It’s all about steadily building up the creepiness. Here’s the problem: It’s all setup. Nothing happens until the climax. Thus we’re stuck in the classic Paranormal Activity trap of perpetually waiting for a scare that never comes, desperately hoping and praying that the climax will make the preceding 90 minutes of buildup worth it. (see also: Skinamarink).
From start to finish, top to bottom, the filmmakers have a nasty habit of stopping just short of saying or doing anything conclusive. There are signs that Evy and her mom had a strained relationship, and those all clash with the signs that Evy is lovingly devoted to her mother. We learn that Evy is a recovering alcoholic, and it never comes up outside of one scene. A short ways in, Evy finds out that she’s six weeks pregnant, and she whipsaws through so many different reactions to the news that we never get a solid answer as to what exactly she intends to do with the fetus.
And all of this is capped off with a climax that throws so much audiovisual shit at the screen without offering any kind of coherent explanation as to what’s going on or what was accomplished. The film aggressively cuts out at the 90-minute time limit, and we’re left with no goddamn idea what just happened. Because apparently, the filmmakers think that makes for good horror cinema.
To be clear, it’s not like there wasn’t any potential for deeper themes. At its core, the gimmick is based on the urban legend of satanic messages that are kinda-sorta-halfway-heard when certain songs are played backwards. The filmmakers thought to apply this concept to old nursery rhymes and children’s songs, many of which have disturbingly violent and fucked-up origins. Thus we have our hook for a paranormal horror film about parents and children, centered around a protagonist who’s dealing with her unresolved mommy issues while facing her own unexpected pregnancy.
The idea is there. But the filmmakers don’t do anything coherent with it.
Undertone is a film with nothing to offer except for one superbly-crafted gimmick. Sometimes that’s enough to save an indie horror flick (last year’s Good Boy comes to mind), but not here. Not when we’re stuck with a film that’s 90 minutes of setup with no payoff in terms of scares, plot development, or worldbuilding. Yes, I’m impressed with the sound, visuals, and performances that the filmmakers could deliver on virtually zero budget. Truly, Tuason proves himself a technical wizard and a shit storyteller.
This film is only really suitable as a demo reel for Tuason. And the film already succeeded at that job, putting him at the helm of a name franchise with a major studio. Therefore, nobody needs this movie anymore. It can safely be ignored. Let’s wait until next year and see what he can do with a proper budget when… fuck, I can’t even finish that sentence.
I thought we had all learned that creepy atmosphere isn’t an end in itself and we need good story or themes or characters to make a film a hit. But NOOOO, I guess we’re going back to the days when staring at the screen and jumping at every idle flicker is enough to make a billion-dollar franchise!
We’re getting a new Paranormal Activity movie in goddamn 2027. Hell, it’s 2026 and we’ve already got a spiritual successor to the PA franchise with this picture. Tuason made his feature debut with this movie and he’s already made my shit list. Fuck this guy for making goddamn Paranormal Activity relevant again.