James Y. Lee
Sometime following the domestic Japanese release of his 2001 film, Pulse, renowned Japanese horror filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa was interviewed by Reverse Shot for the film’s eventual U.S. international release four years later. In it, Kurosawa was not so much asked as he was prompted by the phrase, “There is so much going on; the “bad guy,” more than the ghosts, is technology and isolation…” —to which he stated:
[…] Clearly the internet, and its use in our lives, has kind of stabilized as part of the infrastructure. But I think you could talk about the threat of technology in terms of nuclear power. Before we have a handle on what it really means we are seduced by its potential power, and it very quickly can spread beyond our ability to contain it. I think technology presents that kind of problem.”
You would think that in the 25 years following the release of Pulse—itself a terrifying ghost story about the ways our screen-based lives so easily lure us into paths of eternal loneliness—that horror filmmakers since would have picked up on the terrors of such a modern method of self-imposed isolation. Some have come close, or successfully done so; for instance, Jane Schoenbrun with the melancholically afflicted We’re All Going to the World’s Fair for the arthouse crowd, or the screenlife-pioneering Unfriended series, the mainstream example whose central formal conceit, for all its faults in execution in both films, picked up real steam in its eventual spiritual successors in the years to come.
You would also think that Ian Tuason’s undertone is the kind of film to come next in line here. It’s a horror film that marquee indie distributor A24 picked up for the sake of the fact that it has an exceptional hook; a microbudget horror film shot for roughly $500,000, and whose primary delivery of horror is auditory, intently focused around its sound design. The screening in which I saw this in was a Dolby Cinema viewing, frequently advertised by A24 as part of its marketing scheme that leaned heavily into its audio-based conceit—and for the record, the film itself makes decently clever usage out of its collection of horrifying sounds and noises.
No wonder, of course, that the film tells the story of podcasters; specifically, podcasters who, instead of peddling faux-masculine conspiracies or ethically dubious true crime exploitation, focus on the paranormal and horrific, with specifically geared performances for their audience. Evy Babic (Nina Kiri) is one of these podcasters, living at the moment with her catatonic, ailing mother (Michéle Duquet) in her massive childhood home. The impending knowledge of her mother’s death looms over her quietly, the first meaningful source of tension that the film tries to introduce here. They have a religious past; the film opens on photos of Evy’s childhood, or her mother’s younger self. Her mother’s ailment is not the only thing weighing on her, either; she’s also awaiting the results of a pregnancy test, ostensibly from her aloof and distanced boyfriend, Darren (Ryan Turner), mostly with complicated emotions and trepidations.
On “the undertone podcast,” which Evy co-hosts with Justin (Adam DiMarco), contrasting her religious background, she gets in-character as the skeptic of the duo, prone to finding rational explanations to every source of creepiness that their paranormal auditory adventures provide. Their latest venture concerns an email containing ten audio files sent by a mysterious source, each of which chronicle a series of escalating hauntings plaguing a pregnant couple, Mike (Jeff Yung) and Jessa (Keana Bastidas).
It’s in these recordings—whose contents first haunt Evy’s imagination, and then literally haunt her and her mother as they keep progressing—that we understand why the sound design is so crucial to the execution of this film. Each of these files are crafted with the exact right amount of diegetic quality (or lack thereof, given that in-universe, they’re recorded on Jeff’s phone), with creatively incorporated obscurations and distortions that build suspense and thrive on an optimal sound system that leave some truly horrifying imagery up to the imagination. And when they escape Evy’s noise-cancelling headphones at very specific points, the immersive jolt they provide is sincerely unsettling.
Less glowing words can be said about the other side of this film’s usage of the audiovisual medium. Tuason has, notably, just been tapped to create the next installment in the Paranormal Activity series, whose third film has gained at least some notoriety for its clever formal usage of a camera strapped to an oscillating fan. This particular conceit seems to be a driving inspiration for a veritable glut of shots in undertone, where the camera slowly pans away from Evy or zooms into a specific item in the background as she listens to these menacing audio files, constantly building suspense for whatever threat lurks in the shadows. The first few times around, it’s intriguing, genuinely tense, a sight that gets you nervously squinting at every underexposed zone on screen before something jolts you off-guard. The dozenth time around, you wish Evy would actually get the hint and do the same thing as you.
This is the kind of rollercoaster-horror fare that’s been popularized by franchises like, of course, the aforementioned Paranormal Activity, or Blumhouse roster entries the likes of Insidious—not the sort of marquee “elevated” material that A24’s horror entries have been known for as of late. Never mind the fact that the “elevated horror” label has become meaningless in its own right, poisoned by horror films with loftier pretensions than they’re narratively equipped to handle. The other side of the aisle is just as, if you will, insidious to witness. Tuason’s film lies firmly on this other side; a work with an interesting hook, but which lacks the foundational narrative confidence and attention to detail to support it.
So many ideas are thrown into a smorgasbord in this film’s opening moments that you think would lead somewhere meaningfully terrifying. Hidden messages in children’s songs, which feel like omens warning young ones about the perils of the world around them. Motherhood framed as a curse, susceptible to the workings of evil forces and sacrifices of terrifying implications—present in both Evy and her mother’s catatonic state. The dichotomy of religious faith and zealotry for malicious entities, spirits with envy so all-consuming it ravages the living they threaten. Technology as the conduit for isolation and terror, where we talk not through faces but with voices to an audience that has no real investment in us.
But the film itself is too much of a jumpscare-teasing slow-burn to reward any of these concepts in a way that complements its auditory terrors. Tuason is patient enough for us to show us in great detail Evy’s mother’s illness (itself based on his personal experiences), Evy’s own pregnancy scare, her growing obsession with audio recordings that are frighteningly pertinent to her own situation, and so on. At the same time, however, his film isn’t in enough of a rush to actually try and lead the audience in a direction regarding the themes it so evidently wants to set up. As a result, scenes feel stagnant and repetitive even in a tight-ninety runtime. Upon second blush, beyond the immediate suspense of waiting for the next glibly deployed, tension-relieving jumpscare, nothing truly feels like it builds over time, especially not a feeling of dread or true horror.
The result is a film of missed opportunities—one that teases mentions of miscarriages, death rattles, sacrifices, loneliness and other such genuine terrors, and then lacks the means to creatively pay them off. The relevance of the haunted couple’s recordings’ pregnancy-centric horror and its immediacy to Evy’s troubled relationship with motherhood, ostensibly the core of the film’s emotional suspense, is never fully built upon, nor does Evy seem to pick up on the recordings’ relevance fast enough to ever think twice about persisting with the podcast’s latest episode. Not to mention, as a result, the auditory technology and media-making that predicates its emergence feels only glibly utilized instead of thoroughly explored.
At the very least, the film reaches a final ten-minute stretch of genuine technical bravado, where the camera tracks through nightmarish scenes taking place inside the house, and the sound design gets a chance to finally let loose after an hour and twenty minutes of patient restraint. And Kiri’s performance is a grounding force in a narrative that otherwise feels ill-equipped to serve her character or the relationships loosely set up around her, convincingly selling the frequency of fear that Evy experiences as the terrors of the audio recordings trickle into her domestic life.
But undertone is frankly best enjoyed more as a technical exercise in horrifying sound design than anything else, as any real inquiry into what it’s supposed to actually be about falls flat. The hope is that Tuason can use his very evident penchant and sense for auditory proficiency and build upon it for his future work. For a time, it’s the most resonantly suspenseful and scary aspect of the film, even if parts of it wind up overstaying their welcome. But we’ll also have to see if his hiring for the Paranormal Activity series is a sign of meaningful reinvention, or the signing-on of a director who may merely wind up doing more of the same with a horror series with erstwhile formal excitement and growingly little else to stand on. For now, we only have undertone to work off of, a film that stays true to being a tale of literal sound and fury—and yet, unfortunately also stays true to signifying, if not nothing, very little of true, genuine meaning.
