🩸🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Ian Tuason
If the new A24 film Undertone is considered to be “liminal horror,” then count me as a true-blue liminal horror fan. Operating in between the spaces, notes, and shadows, this is a film that evokes surreal and unsettling perspectives from — the nothingness.
In 2022, we were treated to Skinamarink, a wildly haunting film with a lingering sense of abandonment and melancholy. It turns out, the film also abandoned dialogue, a plot, and any semblance of a “traditional” film. It nagged at many horror films and became a rather polemic jumping-off point for the liminal construct.
Now four years in the rear-view mirror, A24 has taken the chilling lessons learned from Skinamarink and turned out a film that fills in the holes, adds a story, and gives you the dialogue that you may, or may not, have been pining for in 2022.
Undertone is a rather singular film that follows a young horror podcaster, Evy (Nina Kiri), dealing with her mother (Michele Duquet), who’s in her last throes of life. Really. That’s largely the plot. There are two on-screen characters in the film, and one is entirely catatonic for the entire hour and a half run time. If there’s ever been a time to give someone the Academy Award for sleeping, then this is it.
The film is reminiscent of 2023’s Monolith, where a podcaster is forced to contend with a deep and dark secret that’s been shared with the podcast. But that’s really where the comparisons start and end.
Who doesn’t love horror podcasters?!?
Evy and her podcasting partner Justin (Adam DiMarco) are paranormal fact finders who examine spooky stories, found footage, urban myths, and haunted audio recordings. Weirdly, the pair podcast from two significantly different time zones, and Evy is forced (or prefers?) To podcast at the 3 a.m. — the WITCHING HOUR. Obviously, only spooky things happen at 3 a.m. At the very least, the propensity for spooky things to happen is substantially increased.
One evening, a listener emails Justin ten audio files containing dialogue between a husband and wife dealing with sleep issues. Of course, these aren’t your average audio files. They’re riddled with backmasking, children’s songs, and terrifying howls.
Justin quickly — arguably almost too quickly — susses out that he and Evy are dealing with the demonic presence Abyzou. As mentioned in the Testament of Solomon, this ancient demon has a very specific talent involving child-snatching, infertility, and miscarriages. A real demonic trifecta.
In the midst of their monster fact-finding mission, Evy discovers that she is pregnant. The audience is never introduced to the father. The film implies, however, that her ex is probably not the father type. Evy is forced to simultaneously contend with her catatonic mother in the last gasp of life, her newfound pregnancy, and an increasingly ghoulish series of audio recordings.
Should you see Undertone?
This is smart filmmaking. Full stop. It treats horror fans as fully functioning adults and doesn’t pepper the film with cloying jump scares, demons with goofy makeup, and excessive CGI. The film preys on the fact that horror fans have seen the same jump-scare setup a hundred times. They’re expecting it for the 101st time. Instead of spoon-feeding audiences with hokey scares, you’re required to sit in the disturbing silence and try to make sense of the eerie sounds.
Great horror films imply violence or savagery instead of showing it. Undertone has a way of frightening you with sound that you thought you heard — but probably didn’t. Early on in the film, Evy informs Justin that this phenomenon is called apophenia.
While Justin chastises her for using five-cent words, it turns out the apophenia is really the star of the show. At the end of the day, it’s the sounds and thoughts that your feeble brain thought it heard that provide the true scares in life.
Undertone is rated R and in theaters everywhere.