PLOT: A woman hosting a paranormal podcast receives strange recordings involving a married couple experiencing paranormal noises in their home.
REVIEW: The Canadian-made Undertone was one of the big hits of the Fantasia Film Festival last summer, with it being snapped up for a nationwide release by none other than A24. It’s taking a victory lap here at Sundance, where it played as part of the Midnight section. Sadly, this low-key horror film, with the expectations now attached to it thanks to a major horror label putting it out, didn’t do the movie any favors, with it paling in comparison to other Midnight entries like Leviticus, Saccharine, and even the uneven but imaginative Buddy.
Taking a page from Paranormal Activity, this microbudget horror film takes place in a single location and tries to do for podcasts what that movie did for found footage. It follows Evie (Nina Kiri), a young woman taking care of her terminally ill mother, whose only real refuge is the podcast she hosts with her friend Justin (an unseen Adam DiMarco). Kiri is the only person on screen for the majority of the film, with only her comatose mother (Michèle Duquet) also shown.
The two host a paranormal podcast where they examine viral phenomena, with Evie the skeptic to Justin’s believer. They receive an email containing ten audio recordings featuring a married couple, Mike and Jessa, with the latter talking in her sleep. She seems to be saying things backwards, and as they listen, Evie starts to discover hidden messages related to classic nursery rhymes like “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “Rock-a-bye Baby,” which reveal a deep mythology involving demonic possession and human sacrifice.
Of course, this being a movie shot for $500k, all of this is left to the imagination, with Evie listening to increasingly disturbing recordings that seem to be evoking a demonic entity. If Evie had ever seen a horror movie, she and Justin would have stopped listening to these messages as soon as weird things started happening—like Evie’s comatose mother somehow leaving religious icons around the home. But then again, we wouldn’t have a movie.
Undertone is a tough one to review, as I didn’t jive with the premise or style at all, but I can also respect that a certain audience may find this really spooky and hip. To me, it played out as eighty minutes of build-up, followed by ten minutes of belated payoff. The sound design is well done, and director Ian Tuason deserves credit for having made a microbudget movie that connected with a lot of people, but it’s nothing you haven’t seen before—just done on a much lower scale.
It doesn’t help that Nina Kiri’s Evie isn’t given much of a personality, with us learning only a scant few things about her. Mostly, she just listens to the weird recordings and doesn’t make much more of an impression than the unseen Justin. Kiri’s performance is fine; she just isn’t given much to work with beyond the podcast gimmick, with the real focus of the movie being the creepy audio design featured on the recordings—which I’ll admit is impressive.
In the end, Undertone may well find an appreciative young audience, but veteran horror fans will likely be like me, left scratching their heads over what exactly A24 saw in it. It’s familiar and often tedious, but respect is due to all involved for the effort. Were it given a more modest build-up, it might have seemed like an interesting experiment, but given how A24 is positioning it, Undertone just feels like a whole lot of hype.
