"It Wants to be Heard": Undertone Review (Spoiler-free)

The marketing campaign for the new A24 horror film 'Undertone' has been bombarded with the witty and extremely intriguing catchphrase - "the scariest movie you'll ever hear". When the film premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival, it picked up the sought after, 'gold audience award', with Undertone further piquing critical curiosity at the Sundance Film Festival. Needless to say, this audio-fuelled horror was making an appearance on many watchlists for the year. However, now that Undertone has been widely released across the globe, the collective opinions are of both gleaming praise and polarising criticism. Regardless, one common ground amongst the gamut of opinions is that this decisive horror is ambiguous, incredibly slow and an auditory nightmare. 

The sceptic Evy (Nina Kiri) co-hosts a paranormal podcast with friend and stern believer in the supernatural, Justin (Adam DiMarco). With the pair being on opposite sides of the world, they are forced to record the podcast in the eerie am, which only adds to their spooky conversations about Ouija boards, curses and so forth. However, their typical back and forth podcast discussions soon reach unprecedented terrain, after they host an episode surrounding an anonymous email containing a slew of letters and audio files. As Evy begins digging into the string of seemingly innocuous files, she discovers a sinister personal connection. 

In the background of these mysterious happenings is a subplot involving Evy and her mother (Michèle Duquet), who she has become the sole carer of. Not only does this provide a destined-for-horror setup, with the only occupants of this isolating house being just the two women, one of whom is bedbound, but it also acts as a conduit for most of the film's intense thematics to bloom. Director Ian Tuason has been open about the factual basis of his own life story integrated within the film, such as caring for his terminally ill parents during the pandemic, and the complex and raw emotional turmoil that came from such an experience. Eventually, this grief and internalised struggle is what the corpus of Undertone relies on. 

Throughout the film it is implied both heavily and figuratively that Evy's upbringing was rather religious, which only acts to foster an intense sense of guilt and trauma that clearly runs deep within Evy's choices. Evy's entire selfhood thrives on scepticism, as she often plays the denier of the supernatural on her podcast, whereas Justin is keen to buy into whatever paranormal activity is in discussion. Even more pertinent is how this idea of denial brings forth a tonal horror towards the film's overarching reveal involving catholic guilt and unwarranted and unfair shame. Essentially, whilst remaining tight-lipped on this easy-to-spoil film, Undertone is an interesting and emotionally authentic take on a subject that is bold and extremely topical. 

The film would not warrant all the praise if it were not for its sound design, which becomes a character within its own right. The presence and idea of hauntology explored through audio is precisely Undertone's major selling and success point, with the film's use of both diegetic and non-diegetic sound being so woven into the fabric of horror that every intense sensory incident primarily derives from the looming threat originating from the aural experience. In other words, the immersive quality of sound being integral to the narrative flow, combined with how exactly Tuason uses the effects (low-frequency, sudden waves of noise and intradiegetic recordings), creates a memorable and lasting experience of pure fear. 

The final crux that Undertone wields in its affective charge is its ability to take many audiences back to a familiar, reminiscent landscape where campfire-esque horror stories became digitalised and fed the blooming appetite of early horror fans. I, like many horror hounds born in the late 1990s would endlessly scour the web for supposedly haunted videos, the uncanny Adult Swim faux infomercials and Creepypasta's read by narrators with an unfathomably deep pitch, hoping to catch the most frightening audio or video ever seen. And although I have viewed a whole smorgasbord of horror cinema since then, very rarely has a feature film captured that same immediate hit of fear; the kind of feeling that dares you to carry on watching without covering your eyes - the horror felt real like it followed you from its desktop cage and into the real world. And Undertone's visceral bite managed to scratch at least part of that nostalgic itch.  

As proven by countless reviews, Undertone does not offer a one-size-fits-all approach to horror, in fact, it is a film that rides the subjectivity wave through and through. But for some, Undertone is exactly the sort of horror film that is worthy of plentiful commendation and an instant purchase of its eventual physical media form. 

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