One of the most underappreciated aspects of forming the tension found in most horror films is the implementation of sound and sound design. The creaking of an ominous door, the thump in the night, in both horror films and real life, sometimes the scariest experience can just be a sound. In his feature debut, Ian Tuason shows a clear understanding of this within his podcast-centric horror film undertone.
Throughout the film, Tuason provides a slow build of hair-raising tension, opting for capturing the atmospheric stillness of one location side by side with an immaculate mix of podcasting and voice recordings, offering an experiment that’s rarely seen in the genre. He isn’t always able to keep its grip on the tension as he slowly peels away at more conventional scare tropes. Its purposeful sluggish pace will lose some viewers, but undertone ultimately works as an immersive, steady crescendo to a full audio nightmare that’s an assault on the senses, making it one of the more fascinating recent genre films.
The film is admittedly light in the script department as we follow Evy Babic (Nina Kiri), a young woman worried about her extremely ill mother (Michèle Duquet), with each passing day feeling like the one when she could pass. Evy rarely gets a moment where she feels at peace with her continued concerns, singing her the lullabies that her mom once sang for her when she was younger.
Her technical escape from her worries lies in a podcast she co-hosts with her friend Justin (Adam DiMarco), entitled “The Undertone,” where they dissect legends, mysteries, and “the unknown”, with Evy questioning every claim and Justin believing the conspiracies behind them. Everything starts to change, however, when they get an anonymous email containing ten mysterious audio files, with each one unveiling darker secrets that become harder to shrug off as just a coincidence.
It should be noted that while undertone’s concept is relatively fresh, it isn’t the first horror film to be sound-centric; the radio-station-centered horror film Pontypool (2008) is a decent example, but undertone differs in that it’s more of an atmospheric mood piece before transitioning into a full assault on your hearing. Tuason provides a true eerie stillness to the film’s mood, rarely indulging in easy jump scares or cheap spooks, rather fully immersing you into listening to audio recordings, thinking if what you heard is truly what you heard.
I love Tuason’s use of reflective surfaces and slow camera pans and tracking shots throughout, showcasing the horror, always keeping the audience on their edge searching throughout every corner of the frame to see if something is or isn’t there, and even when there is, it’s there silently, covering the mood with more goosebump-ridden dread during the film’s slow rise. Evy, throughout most of the movie, is the only character we see on screen, and with her headphones on, the only sounds we can hear are either her conversations with Justin or the reversal of sent audio recordings of children’s lullabies that may or may not have disturbing hidden messages.
The sound mix, especially within Dolby Atmos, is incredibly impressive within these scenes, specifically, sending a cold shiver down your spine before all hell completely breaks loose in the third act. In specific scenes, where nothing is on the screen besides sounds of terror, the film’s experimentation is most effective.
Where undertone does admittedly falter is within its story, where its light depth of exposition and the inner workings of its audio file mystery are loosely strung together. Aside from the fact the the film eventually does hit conventional horror semantics within its religious themes, and reveals surrounding motherhood taking a turn, the more you peel back the layers of the story the more it comes across as silly than deeply terrifying, but Tuason’s direction is ultimately so confident that the success of the pressure cooking all to one big pop wins out in the end.
Your mileage will vary on whether undertone’s slow burn of podcast recording frights rattle your core, but Ian Tuason helms a great feature debut that effortlessly tells a story through immersive audio. When executed right, the scariest horror can be told through the imagination of what lies behind the noise.
Review Courtesy of Joshua Mbonu
Feature Image Credit to A24