The Undertone
Writer/Director: Ian Tuason
Cast: Nina Kiri, Kris Holden-Ried, Jeff Yung
Sound is vital to a wide swath of horror. If you don't believe me, think about the number of people you've seen put their fingers in their ears during a scary movie, hoping to stave off the worst of a jump scare. Films like The Exorcist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre are masterpieces of terror not just because of how they look, but because of how they sound. It's a vital ingredient, and the right story can make it not just a cornerstone of the fear, but a major character.
That's the case with The Undertone, the new film from writer/director Ian Tuason about a podcaster trapped in a quagmire of grief and frustration who finds herself gripped and strangely changed by mysterious audio recordings. It's one of the highlights of this year's Fantasia Festival, and a must-see for anyone who loves creepy audio, single-location horror, and chilling descents into absolute darkness.
Evy (Nina Kiri) has put her life on hold and moved back home to care for her ailing mother. This means she's stuck in an old, empty house with a parent who can no longer interact with her or even perform basic ablutions on her own. It's a lot for anyone to process, and Evy's lone lifeline and distraction is the podcast she co-hosts with her friend Justin (Kris Holden-Ried). It's a pretty standard setup for anyone interested in creepy, paranormal, and otherwise mysterious content. He's the believer, she's the skeptic, and they maintain those characters throughout, bantering back and forth about conspiracy theories and the supernatural.
But things start to shift one night when Justin reveals that he's been sent a series of mysterious audio recordings from an anonymous source. The recordings follow a couple who seem to be experiencing something strange every night when they go to sleep, something that escalates with each new audio file. The more Evy listens, the more she hears, and the more she starts to wonder if she's let something into her ears — and her life — that won't ever leave.
I won't give away what's on those recordings, or how any of this resolves, but The Undertone is almost entirely committed to this basic setup. Evy takes care of her mom, she tries to record the podcast, she hears the recordings, and she experiences strange things. We rarely leave the claustrophobic confines of her mother's shadowy, aging home, and Evy's other companions are almost entirely just voices through headphones.
This is the kind of thing that could easily grow stale over the course of the film, but Tuason's camera never forgets its part in the experience. Evy's home is only so big, but Tuason finds every conceivable way to frame her, and to throw shadows across every corner of the home, pushing in and pulling back from Kiri's expressive face with grace and a constant eye toward suspense. There are moments in this film, a relatively jump-scare-free experience, when you become absolutely convinced that something is in the shadows in the corner of the dining room, or lurking in the hallway just beyond the kitchen. It's a remarkably chilling visual experience.
But of course, it's the sound design that makes The Undertone work to the fullest possible extent. Creepy audio recordings, particularly ones recorded on someone's phone in a modern context as the ones in this film are, can be quite tricky to fake. There's an urgency that sometimes gets missed in the performances, a feeling that you're hearing an impression of something rather than the thing itself, but the voice talents of Jeff Yung and Sarah Beaudin as the couple in the audio files make them truly sing. There's a sense, even from the very beginning, that we're listening to something we were never supposed to hear, that no one was ever supposed to hear, and it's absolutely shiver-inducing.
The Undertone is a stunning piece of indie horror craft, delivering soundscapes and claustrophobic environments that crawl into your brain like a song you can't forget, and fester there, replicating the same obsessions that its characters experience. It's one of the most unsettling horror films I've seen in a while, and deserves to be seen — and heard — by the widest possible audience.
