Our coverage of the Fantasia Film Festival is rolling on, even if the Festival has officially wrapped! One movie I absolutely need to talk about is The Undertone, because it’s undoubtedly one of my favourite movies that I saw at the festival. 

The setup is simple:

“A podcast host covering spooky content moves in to care for her dying mother. When sent recordings of a pregnant couple’s paranormal encounters, she discovers their story parallels hers, each tape pushing her toward madness.”

The film was written and directed by Ian Tuason and stars Nina Kiri as Evy, the podcast host who moves in with her mother.

As usual, this review will be spoiler-free, so don’t be scared to dive in! 

My Thoughts

If you read our Best Movies of 2023, you’ll know that Skinamarink was #2 on my list. Like that movie, The Undertone is all about doing the most to bring horror back to its base elements of sights and especially sounds.

Unlike Skinamarink, though, I think this movie is more accessible. The Undertone is shot simply but to maximum effect. I won’t even describe specific shots because it would lessen their impact. I will say it’s the kind of movie where you’re constantly checking the corners and edges of the frame to make sure nothing is hiding there. 

As a seasoned horror movie veteran, I consider movies like this to be the scariest kind I’ve ever seen. It’s easy to drop the audio and then suddenly blast loud music and have something jump into frame, that’s why 90% of horror movies are crammed full of jump scares. But eventually, you start to see them coming from a mile away, and they don’t even impact you.

The Undertone, like Skinamarink before it, understands that tension is what really makes an audience uncomfortable. Jump scares are releases of tension, so you may jump when one happens, but it’s not real fear or stress. 

This movie uses the frame and sound design to maximize that tension. Every time the main character put on her noise-cancelling headphones to start recording the podcast, I would hold my breath as the ambient sounds of the house went silent and all you could hear was the muffled hum of the headphones, as if I was also wearing them. 

The brilliance of this is that it makes the audience feel like a part of the movie, anxiously watching over Evy while she’s recording the podcast to try and see if anything spooky is happening in the house, as if we could burst in to warn her. 

The camera work enhances this, too. Simple movements give us the opportunity to scan the house looking for something, anything, that might be where it shouldn’t be. 

The fact that I’m talking about all this horror and dread, without even discussing the tapes they’re listening to on the podcast,should really tell you just how much this movie got under my skin. The podcast within the movie is a completely distinct source of dread in its own right too, where they play anonymously submitted audio tapes of a different paranormal encounter. The tapes themselves are creepy as hell, and the characters constantly rewind and replay key moments over and over again to try and hear certain things, which naturally means we the audience end up doing the same thing. 

Nina Kiri as Evy is phenomenal in this too, selling everything perfectly, dialing up every feeling we’re collectively feeling. As our only real onscreen character in the movie, she has to be strong enough to carry you through, and she does it with absolute ease. 

Lastly, I have to mention Ian Tuason, who is outstanding in his directorial debut. The things that make this movie so effective seem very simple on the surface, but they’re incredibly hard to actually pull off convincingly, which is why so many other horror directors just rely on jump scares. From nearly the very beginning, Tuason starts ratcheting the tension higher and higher, barely giving you the room to breathe, and just when you feel like it’s safe to let your guard down, it’s not. 

Verdict

Not only did I love The Undertone, it was confidently a “Best of the Fest” movie for me. This movie proves that you don’t need millions of dollars or elaborate sets to make an incredibly effective horror movie. The tension was so next level that by the end of the movie, I wasn’t sitting in my seat, I was welded to it.

Without question, The Undertone is best enjoyed at a theatre, and I’m happy to report that it was just announced that A24 has acquired the rights for this movie, so I hope that means it will be coming with a nice theatrical run too. 

When it does, don’t wait around. See this movie on opening weekend with a packed crowd and immerse yourself in this movie. Just don’t expect to ever feel comfortable wearing noise-cancelling headphones at home again.