Undertone tells the story of two paranormal podcast hosts who receive an unsettling anonymous email containing ten audio files that they begin to investigate. For Evy Babic (Nina Kiri), things quickly turn sinister as an unnerving presence begins to uproot her life over the coming days. She is forced to come to terms with her dying mother, seemingly fractured relationship, and her own personal demons all while Justin (Adam DiMarco) and her get pulled deeper into this mystery.
This film fully delivers in its efforts to fully immerse the audience in this sinister soundscape. The sound design was heavily influenced by Evy wearing noise canceling headphones whenever she was recording, resulting in the isolation she was experiencing feeling very real. Tensions are high, with the line between reality and illusion blurring as Evy and Justin make their way through the files, uncovering more and more of how Evy is connected to this darkness and what it encompasses.
Justin has one line that is hard to forget in the film when he says, “Don’t be afraid of the dark, be afraid of the silence.” This fits the premise beautifully, but also dilutes the film’s overall fear factor. There are moments that are filled to the brim with anxiety inducing shrieks, moaning, banging, and “plumbing issues” as Evy so naively puts it. Less is sometimes more and whilst still being able to appreciate the immense tension, the immersive experience could have been brought to even greater heights if the deafening silence was given slightly more room to breathe.
The care director Ian Tuason and his team put into constructing the atmosphere this film inhabits is remarkable, especially considering that the film takes place in one location. The aforementioned soundscape utilizes household banging noises, children crying, and distorted children’s songs to establish this eeriness that is constantly building. This was coupled with intricate camerawork, specifically the mixture of slow panning shots with lingering shots, to make the darkness feel like its own physical entity. It worked to make Evy simply moving around her house or checking on her mother feel dangerous, almost as if anything could happen and the demonic entity at large could make its presence felt at any moment. Even if the story might have not been perfect in its efforts to establish a cohesive narrative, the strides that were taken to speak on motherhood and self doubt made it rather simple to empathize with Evy.
3.5 out of 5 Stars
Undertone does an impressive job in putting a unique spin on your typical horror tropes, utilizing everything in its power to erect a heart pounding atmosphere. The manipulation of sound, space, and the human psyche itself results in a slow burn that deserves to be experienced in a premium format, Dolby in particular. There is a real evil at large here that you have hear to believe.
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