Undertone – Dir: Ian Tuason (13th Floor Film Review)
Undertone is a film that feels small but sounds big, and recognises its audience is the podcast generation.
Starring Nina Kiri, Adam DiMarco
Hard to believe that podcasts have really only been with us since around 2005, but within that time they’ve become a big part of the fabric of our society and arguably have as much of an impact on our culture as movies do. So expect to see a number of films using a podcast as the backbone of their plot, and what better genre to embrace this medium than horror?
Undertone follows Evy Babic (Nina Kiri) as she records episodes of her supernatural horror podcast over the span of a week. She’s joined online by her co-host (who we never see) and through their introductions, we learn she’s the self proclaimed sceptic who ensures that nonsense claims will be debunked. Things get progressively more disturbing as they work their way through some audio files sent in by a listener.
Much has been made of the effort put into the audio production of Undertone, and in many ways it does deliver on its tagline “The scariest movie you’ll ever hear”. There are a number of clever ways it uses sound to pull you into the moment, even feeling like you’ve had noise-cancelling headphones dropped on your head when she begins recording her show. There are thumps, rattles, crying, whispering, long creepy moments of silence, nursery rhymes played backwards, overlaid voices – they really throw everything into this, and the effect of seeing it in a good cinema is impressive. I pity those of you who are going to slog through this at home without any form of surround sound.
The overall result is a mixed bag, though. At its best, those wonderful moments of well-crafted sound scares will give you satisfying chills on the back of your neck; when they don’t work, you’ll notice the giggling around the theatre as something slips from spooky into goofy territory. Unfortunately, there’s not enough meat on the bone of the story to sustain the film, so its reliance on sound as the one thing to win audiences over is its undoing.
It’s a single location, it’s got one actor that you see (unless you count the vegetative mum upstairs), and it takes place over a few nights, so it’s very contained. That’s not inherently a bad thing, but it does mean you’re heavily reliant on a great script, award-worthy performances, or a great gimmick (such as having your ears treated to something they’ve never experienced before). The script is your typical horror fare and never elevates beyond what we’ve seen many times before, with characters that don’t quite feel grounded. The performance from Nina Kiri is admirable given she’s carrying the whole film, but her co-host – the disembodied voice coming through her headphones – had me questioning whether the lines were being delivered deliberately oddly to give a sense of dissociation from reality.
So it is a one-trick pony, essentially relying on the selling point of ASMR’ing into your nervous system and providing enough scares that way to win you over. For many audiences, that will be enough, particularly for those of you who scare easily; this could be a fun ride. For me, I’m inoculated from too many decades of too many horrors to have haunted-house sounds carry me through an entire runtime – particularly at the climax of the film, when you’re bombarded with so many horror audio clichés all at once that it almost becomes egregious.
If you’re in the mood for some auditory excitement, do yourself a favour and see this in cinemas – it’s not entirely pointless watching this at home in a few months, but you’ll have certainly missed its main appeal. Just don’t expect to be blown away by something you’ve never seen before; we’ve seen this 100 times before, just maybe never heard it before.
Matthew Rice
Undertone is in cinemas April 9th. Click here to tickets and showtimes.
