There’s an argument that cinema’s sonic potential remains underused, even as surround sound technologies multiply the ways audiences hear a film. Undertone bets on that instinct by centering a podcaster who is juggling care for her ailing mother with a haunted audio world that seems to bleed into real life.
Directed by Ian Tuason, this feature debut leans into ASMR-like dialogue as its hook. Yet the film around the technical experiment wobbles between farcical and weary, dulling any genuine frights that might come from inventive Foley or channelled ambience.
Premise and performance
Evi Babic, portrayed by Nina Kiri, splits time between tending a comatose mother and recording a supernatural podcast with her friend Justin, who only appears as a voice on the other end. With most of the action resting on Kiri, the performance struggles to carry the heavy load, feeling flat at key junctions and rarely convincing as things take a darker turn.
Michle Duquet shows up briefly as Mama, mostly breathing and lying still, which only highlights the strain on Kiri to sell the escalating tension. The script piles on exposition and earnest online-search chatter, which undermines the characters humanity and the films mood.
The setup and its many flat notes
The plot leans on a well-worn creepypasta premise—backwards nursery rhymes concealing demonic messages. It’s a mechanism that might shiver a bedroom crowd at a sleepover, but on screen it reads as gimmicky and out of sync with the film’s more po-faced ambitions.
We watch Evi and Justin react with mounting intensity to the supposed revelations, yet the moment-to-moment suspense remains inconsistent. The broader conception of turning a podcast into a vehicle for horror is appealing in theory; Undertone simply doesn’t sustain that promise.
Verdict
Undertone emerges as a bold idea that never fully coheres into a satisfying movie. Its strongest asset—the commitment to sound as the engine of fear—ends up overshadowed by awkward dialogue and a story that never quite aligns with its audacious concept.
Source: Original article
