Nowadays, horror movies can’t be touted as anything less than the scariest thing you’ve ever seen. We saw it with movies like Longlegs and Hereditary, and that just sets people up to have some very strong opinions when the film doesn’t reach the heights they were anticipating. You either walk out of the theater swimming in your own pee or it’s a huge disappointment. It’s an uphill battle a lot of films can’t overcome, and unfortunately, that’s kind of where Undertone landed for me.

Don’t get me wrong; this is an admirable first feature that looks great for only costing half a million dollars. There is an obvious understanding in how tension can be crafted with the bare minimum, which is where the film tends to shine the brightest. It’s mostly a success in the technical department, but while it succeeds at looking and acting like a horror film, it doesn’t quite go all the way. Undertone sets the stage for spooky shenanigans but rarely does it lead to a satisfying payoff for either the audience or the main character. The whole thing feels a lot like a pulled punch, whether it be because they didn’t have the means to execute something more engaging or they didn’t have the creativity to pull it off. Sincerely hoping it’s a case of the former, because this does show promise, but like many podcasts, it’s sometimes all fluff and no substance.

Undertone follows Evy, a woman looking after her dying mother in her old home. But when the sun goes down, she records a supernatural podcast with her friend Justin, where the two debate the validity of scary stories and videos. An email containing ten audio files suddenly finds its way into their inbox, and as they start to listen to them one by one, a darkness begins to overtake Evy that draws some frightening parallels between her present and the evils of the past.

This is essentially a one woman show, one that Nina Kiry manages to run pretty well. This whole thing is more or less carried by her facial expressions, her deliveries and her reactions to the growingly uneasy setting around her. She does get someone to bounce off of occasionally, whether it be her voice-only cohost or her comatose mother, but this is largely all weighed on Kiry’s performance. It’s fairly good, even though the natural structure of the film doesn’t leave her much to do. A lot of the performance is her getting uneasy at her computer, then uneasily walking up the stairs to her mother’s room. The film rinses and repeats this structure, and while Evy’s mental state starts to get more and more uneasy, we only see this in slight changes to her personality rather than larger, physical moments of challenge.

There’s a lot of repetition in this film, for good or for bad. The positive side to it is that the setup kinda works. Having the characters make their way through increasingly uneasy video files in the dark will undoubtedly be tense for most, but you also get the feeling of the film spinning its wheels, running in circles because it’s boxed itself into a structural corner. Repetition can be fine, but you should still feel like something worthwhile is happening to the story and characters.  At times, this really felt like a short film stretched to the length of a feature. Sure, things technically happen, but the film doesn’t go too far in its build-up to its climax. 

A lot of this comes down to both pacing and payoff, with little decisions that kind of just made this drag for me. Firstly, letting us know that there are ten audio files actually slows the film down because you know it doesn’t end until we get to the tenth one. But on that journey, whenever they interrupt the flow of listening to all of them, I felt like the film was moving away from the interesting parts of the story too often. The most unrealistic part of this whole thing was that they take three days to record an hour-long podcast. I can accept ghosts and demons, but not this. And that brings me to the payoff, because like I said, the film is great at building up tension. The camera often puts a lot of emphasis on the negative space of the house, repeating shots of dark corners and the stairs to build that implication that something could be there. Nothing ever is, but still, something could be there. But it gets to a point where it’s all tension and no payoff. Sure, it throws in one or two government mandated jump scare noises, but they never feel connected to what the camerawork and the blocking are trying to frighten you with. 

And it’s a shame that the technicals are so well done, because the rest of the story and scares just can’t keep up. Listening to reversed audio of children’s lullabies is very engrained in the mythos of internet horror this film pays homage to, but it’s not exactly all that unnerving. Luckily, most of this is salvaged by the impressive, all-encompassing sound design that really makes you feel like you’re right in the room with headphones on. But the way the horror ties into the bigger ideas of the film just ended up feeling flat to me. Grief, isolation, religious trauma, and parental fears all hover around this film, but some of them really just feel tacked on to fleshen out the narrative. These themes don’t always feel like they bolster the film, but rather decorate it because these are the elements we’ve come to expect from A24. And while this film is certainly unnerving in the moment, it lacks the kind of horror that latches onto you, that follows you home and rests in your brain after all is said and done. This isn’t doing for mp3 files what Jaws did for the ocean. The audio files aren’t exactly unsettling themselves, and even when they start to draw parallels to Evy’s situation, it just feels like something you’ve seen before. 

Undertone takes a big step from films like Unfriended, moving from beyond the confines of a computer while still tackling the aesthetics that come with it, and like films like Unfriended, it’s a bit mixed. It’s a combination of the horrors of domestic darkness like in Skinamarink and the foreboding encroach of media-driven curses like The Ring, but there’s only so many successes that come from this particular niche. Sure, it will have you shielding your eyes and turning away because it knows how to spark a primal sense of fear, but it may also leave you disappointed when this buildup doesn’t ultimately amount to anything. I see this as a great exercise in horror rather than a total package, so while this is a solid demonstration for director Ian Tuason, I’m gonna hold out until his next film to see what he’s really got. But it looks like his next film is a Paranormal Activity movie so…third time’s the charm, maybe?

RATING

THE ANADROME

ANADROM (noun); a word or phrase that spells a different, valid word or phrase when reversed.

A lot of the horror from this movie derives from playing things in reverse, so I wanted to find a way to best illustrate that in a cocktail. I’ve decided to turn to the world of reverse cocktails, cocktails that swap the measurements of their ingredients to make a slightly different drink. And that’s what I’m doing here with this riff on a Manhattan that will have a noticeably lower ABV, and the use of specifically Rosso vermouth is going to bring about more herbal and spiced notes than your usual Manhattan. With one of these babies, it can get you through any haunted podcast. Ghosts aren’t as scary when you’re a little bit tipsy.

INGREDIENTS

• 2oz Rosso vermouth
• 1oz rye whiksey
• 2 dashes orange bitters
• 1 dash angostura bitters
• Garnish: maraschino cherry

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Add ingredients to a mixing glass with ice and stir to chill.
2. Strain into a chilled coup glass.
3. Garnish with cherry or drop it in the cocktail.