Undertone review: An unnerving experience (original) (raw)
A ‘found audio’ horror with a terrific performance from near-solo act Nina Kiri and a powerful sense of escalating terror.
By Kim Newman 08-04-26 15,229
Evy (Nina Kiri) has moved back into her family home to be a full-time carer for her bedridden, virtually catatonic mother (Michèle Duquet) in Undertone. Raised religious, Evy is now the sceptical half of a paranormal podcast team, always seeking rational explanations while her voice-on-a-phone partner Justin (Adam DiMarco) perhaps performatively pushes supernatural solutions. While Evy has to cope with family issues – not only is her mother presumably dying, but she thinks she may be pregnant by a feckless boyfriend – her only distraction is the podcast’s latest case, ten anonymously emailed audio files which purport to be a chronicle of demonic possession.
Like many podcasts, this pursues tangents rather than tell a straight-ahead story: with footnotes on the meanings of nursery rhymes (all gruesome), backward messages concealed in chants of ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ and the reputed predations of child-murdering demon Abyzou.
Kiri – known for a role on The Handmaid’s Tale, though she has a stack of indie horror credits (I Am Vengeance, The Haunted House on Kirby Road, The Heretics) – carries a lot of weight in a tour-de-force turn. Long scenes just have Evy listening to voices on the phone (or offscreen) and the soundscape of eeriness. Writer-director Ian Tuason collages disquieting noises like distorted children’s chants, crying babies, whispered curses and feedback. The widescreen often has Evy off-centre in long shots, which encourages the audience to make out shapes in the gloom behind her, but Undertone withholds jump scare moments until the hectic, disturbing final reel as everything (including, to be frank, the story) comes unravelled at once.
It’s likely to be triggering for a wide range of people by touching on upsetting themes, which perhaps makes it too confrontational for the gooseflesh brigade. Undertone tackles a lot of material, not all of which it can fully explore. That its stories unfold in bits and pieces (with drop-outs and ellipses) makes it an unnerving experience. Recommended, with caution.
Undertone will be released in cinemas on 10 April