Clever premise can’t save underwhelming Undertone
Undertone, the first feature film from Canadian filmmaker Ian Tuason, first made a splash after it won the top prize in the the Best Canadian Feature competition at the Fantasia International Film Festival last year. The indie film’s success at the horror/fantasy showcase earned it a spot in the always intriguing Midnight section at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. A24, the studio responsible for such acclaimed horror fare as Hereditary, Midsommar, and The Witch snapped up the picture, and it’s now in wide release. Unfortunately, A24 may have made a bad bet, as a few festival accolades do not always bestow instant prestige horror film status. While Undertone delivers a few legit creepy thrills, they’re not enough to make up for the picture’s overall inert tone.
The film’s clever conceit is that it relies primarily on sound to provide its scares, whether they be of the intense jump variety or the type that slowly but steadily creates an atmosphere of dread. Our heroine is Evy (Nina Kiri), the co-host of a paranormal podcast that explores “all things creepy” and which she naturally records in the post-midnight hours. Logistically this timing is because her co-host, Justin (Adam DiMarco, Albie from The White Lotus season two), is based in London, while she’s at home in Toronto. But of course listening to eerie digital files at 3:00am in the quiet dark is much scarier than hearing them at 3:00pm in bright daylight.
Justin is never seen on camera, and Evy and her mother (Michèle Duquet), bedridden and dying in an upstairs bedroom, are the only characters who appear on screen, adding to the film’s claustrophobia and the heightened significance of any sounds and noises we hear. The film’s action kicks in when Justin and Evy receive ten audio recordings purportedly of odd occurrences and conversations between a young pregnant couple. As the skeptical Evy and the more open-minded Justin listen intently to the recordings and try to make sense of them, Evy’s initial cynical reaction changes after strange occurrences begin to happen in her own house. What follows is a catalog of horror tropes, including disconcerting religious imagery, objects that move mysteriously, an unexpected pregnancy, foreboding folk tales of child murders, faucets and lights that turn on for no reason, and, of course, the biggie: potential demonic possession.
Tuason overlays all these chilling phenomena with the disturbing audio files filled with screams and undecipherable unsettling noises. A few also contain children’s nursery rhymes, some of which are sung backwards. If you already find children’s nursery rhymes vaguely unnerving, hearing them this way is even more disquieting.
As Justin and Evy try to discern hidden messages in the audio content, Evy grows increasingly paranoid and agitated. The problem with the film, though, is that it takes much too long to offer up its unexpected, jarring moments or reach any sort of denouement, both of which are key to an effective and engaging horror thriller.
Tuason touches on themes of motherhood, which can be fraught with obligations, anxiety, and guilt, and its juxtaposition with childhood, with its attendant innocence and reliance on adults who may or may not be trusted. But these ideas are never fleshed out in a satisfying way, and seem underexplored. Sounds, or the lack of them, can be equally as terrifying as menacing visuals, but unfortunately Undertone doesn’t have much else to offer besides that premise. An ending that leaves us with more questions than answers feels unfinished instead of intriguing. And after sitting through a long, slow build up with so much potential, that’s not scary–just disappointing.
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Undertone is currently playing, including at the AMC Metreon, Apple Van Ness, Regal Stonestown, and Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco, the AMC Bay Street in Emeryville, the Regal Jack London in Oakland, and the Cinemark Century theaters in Richmond, Walnut Creek, and Pleasant Hill.
