You can’t help but think of Shakespeare’s warning to ‘beware the Ides of March’ when a disruptive horror of the flavour of an undertone drops in the first couple weeks of the month. While I’ve also learned to be skeptical of claims like “scariest movie of the year” and similar when I hear them, Ian Tuason’s new audio-centric horror sure seems like it’s poised to live up to those claims.
In my adulthood, I’ve learned that the jump-scare focus that many horrors lean on just isn’t for me. Anyone can cut the sound and then produce a loud noise to startle you, is pretty much where I land. While there’s a place for this type of scare, of course, and usually as a kind of release valve for the tension in a scene, it’s fleeting and my preference is the longer-term scares that creep up on you in a slow burn, burrowing their way gradually into your mind and lodging itself there, scaring you long after the credits. That’s real horror to me.
In Tuason’s new horror, it’d be easy to lean on jump scares in a film that deftly uses well-placed silences and misdirection in the form of distorted voices, children’s songs, and the weird creaks and drips of an old home to unnerve you as a viewer, but Tuason isn’t doing that here. There’s very often a very long wait – if it ever comes – for a release valve on the tension as main character Evy moves around her ailing mother’s home. What Tuason does is allow both those silences aurally and large swaths of empty visual space visually to be filled with the audience’s imagination, forcing you to conjure the potential horrors on your own.
In undertone, we follow podcaster Evy (Nina Kiri) almost exclusively, and that’s one of the boldest decisions of all. She and her unconscious mother are the only characters onscreen in the entire film. We hear other voices, like Evy’s co-host Justin (Adam DiMarco) and a handful of callers and the voices on the show’s recordings but none of them are ever seen. As we pick up with Evy at the beginning of undertone, she’s returned to her childhood home, taking care of her mother (Michele Duquet) who is paralysed with illness and confined to a bed. Evy hosts her weekly horror-centric podcast, inspired by viral internet ‘creepypastas’ or urban legends, from the dining room table while tending to her mother in the intervening hours. Co-host Justin has received an email that contains ten audio recordings, seemingly of a young couple. The recordings depict the couple being tormented by strange noises in the background, and while Evy remains skeptical that anything supernatural or unusual is occurring, Justin is convinced.
As the pair make their way through the audio files, undertone steadily ratchets up the tension throughout in a direct, focused way on Evy as we follow her through her home where she is relentlessly pursued by an entity that primarily exists as a soundwave. With Tuason at the helm and Kiri as our avatar, the scary soundscape begins to reveal a mythology about an ancient creature that preys on mothers, while making Evy and her own mother the perfect target.
None of this would work if Kiri’s performance as Evy wasn’t top notch, but fortunately it is. She is grounded and relatable while always feeling in complete command of her character. Similarly, Tuason’s setting of the claustrophobic home, feeling constantly like the walls are closing in as the entity inhabits any and every blank space, adds plenty of character itself. And of course, most of all, the audio – especially when experienced in a theatre setting – often makes you feel as though the creature is right behind you.
Perhaps undertone does too good a job of all this world- and atmosphere-building, because its climax doesn’t really reach the potential laid out by its well-crafted setup. For me, undertone seems to end (with a pretty fantastic audio beat) just as we’re set for a big and cathartic reveal. Instead, we’re left with our (expertly-piqued) imagination once again, having to fill in the blanks as the credits roll. It’s not an ending everyone will be happy with, but there’s enough to love in the previous 90 minutes that I’d forgive it.
undertone is the kind of indie horror that makes me want to get behind it. Not only is it Canadian-made on a micro-budget, but its minimalist approach onscreen is also an impressive achievement from a visual and story perspective, with a sound palette that sticks with you after it’s over. It’s no wonder that Tuason’s already been tapped to reboot the minimalist Paranormal Activity series, and I was delighted to hear in Tuason’s remarks after my screening that he insisted that his crew from undertone will be coming along with him. Until then, my recommendation is to catch his debut in a theatre if you can, or at least on a killer sound system, because undertone is a film that must be heard to be believed.
Ian Tuason’s undertone is currently in theatres from A24.
