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Undertone, starring Nina Kiri and directed by Ian Tuason
Trailer: A24

Undertone
Directed by Ian Tuason
Rated R
Recorded 13 March 2026
#undertone

Instead of clicking “play,” hit “delete.”

Tales from the Crib

A nursery rhyme. The heavy breathing of an ill elderly woman. A tea kettle shrieking. A clock ticking. White noise. All silenced when large, ear-covering headphones are put on. It’s an effective opening that works when taken merely as an exercise in experimental filmmaking and finding a style that is intended to focus on the aural aspects of the moviegoing experience.

However, Undertone continues the problem with modern horror. Throwing weird stuff on the screen does not constitute horror (horrible filmmaking is one thing, horrifying storytelling is another).

In the case of Undertone, it’s a good idea gone awry, a riff on the found footage trope, this time playing off found audio files emailed to a couple podcasters. Surely the bulk of most horror stories is in the mind. But the audio here doesn’t conjure horror, it’s merely a megaphone for a spitball approach to kicking up scares and hoping something will stick.

What sinks Undertone is a horrible – tone deaf – misinterpretation of certain historical elements that actually makes this nonsense more laughable than frightening. Some of it is so ludicrous, it’s flat-out insulting. Dan Brown is a master of building incredible (and largely credible) stories around historical arcana. Undertone’s writer and director, Ian Tuason, isn’t there yet. Marking his feature film debut, Undertone is a teeth-cutting effort for Tuason, but it doesn’t bode well for the next Paranormal Activity film, to which Tuason is currently attached as both writer and director.

Tales from the Beyond

The setup is simple and befitting of a low-budget horror movie. The bulk of the story takes place in one house and there are only two primary, on-screen characters. The rest is left to the imagination by way of audio via phone and online communications.

Front-and-center is the relationship between the two podcasters, Evangeline Babic (Nina Kiri) and her London-based collaborator, Justin Manuel (voiced by Adam DiMarco). Together, they’re the Scully and Mulder of paranormal podcasters. She’s the skeptic, he’s the believer.

And there’s the audio from a collection of 10 files sent via email to Justin from a strange email address. Justin, the gullible yet intrepid (and unseen) podcaster that he is, opens the files before he can talk himself out of some potential real terror – such as malware or other viruses.

Evy and Justin are supposedly longtime friends, albeit they haven’t seen each other in ages, given they’re living in different countries now. That physical distance underscores an emotional detachment that challenges credibility. Their banter doesn’t play as the natural chit-chat of longtime friends. It’s stilted. And yet they’ve paired up and taken on a podcast series. They even keep saying they need to “get back in character” after moments of (ideally, character-building) chatter but it’s hard to tell the difference. Their podcast professionalism isn’t much different from the rest of their dialogue.

Justin has some sort of day job or other side gig out there in jolly ol’ England (or is he in London, Ontario?). As for Evy, she’s juggling caregiving for her ailing mom (who’s bedridden and hasn’t eaten in two days), podcasting, drinking as a medication and, apparently, some sort of romantic interest that has led to pregnancy.

Tales from the Past

The recordings involve a couple named Mike (voiced by Jeff Yung) and Jessa (voiced by Keana Lyn Bastidas). He’s taken to recording her talking in her sleep to document her bizarre behaviors. It’s just audio, but there seems to be plenty of other stuff going on that’d make for good “found video” footage. Some of the audio clips are short, some are more involved. But it’s a lot of sound effects and words that require interpretation. That is to say, listen closely, then see what you can make of it. It’s like all those ghost hunting shows wherein the crack investigators record apparitional audio then state what they hear. Sure enough, once somebody says it sounds like something, hearing it again makes it sound exactly like that. The idea’s been planted.

Anyway, a couple of the mysterious messages sound like “Mike Kills All” and “Come In Abyzou.” Ah, but that last one? It’s backwards.

And so Undertone goes down a rabbit hole of backward recordings that include nursery rhymes and lullabies being played backwards. Not since the hey-day of Satanic messages in heavy metal songs being played backwards has so much nonsense polluted minds.

Here, it’s egregious.

Now those nursery rhymes and lullabies are portrayed as nefarious “true” horror stories involving baby mutilations and other remarkably misguided tales involving the Queen’s Consort, London Bridge, black sheep and other previously tranquil scenarios performed for infants and toddlers.

Baa Baa Black Sheep. Rock-a-bye Baby. London Bridge Is Falling Down.

Sigh.

Where Tuason tries to take these songs is a complete bastardization of history. It’s one thing to take some creative or poetic license in service to a properly satisfying end, it’s another to be garishly wrong. Throw in the incessant crying of babies, stories of babies being drowned in sinks and tales of a woman swinging a garbage bag against a furnace – with a baby in the bag – and the material devolves from anything terrifying into something that is merely depraved with no justifiable impact.

It’s a bizarre, twisted case of narrative overkill further exacerbated by eerie effects of Evy’s mother inexplicably appearing in the background, lights turning on mysteriously, thumping sounds from the furnace and a lot of bump-in-the-night cheap chills.

Tales from the Dark

Setting aside the lullaby nonsense, there is a good, scary element in Underscore involving Abyzou. She is a “legitimate” demon from folklore and she was identified as the perpetrator of miscarriages and other causes of infant mortality. So, to make Undertone’s convoluted presentation a little more sensible, the idea is Abyzou will be coming for Evy’s unborn child. From there, more of the religious symbolism that fills Undertone starts to make a little more sense. But, pulling in St. Rita of Cascia and texts from King Solomon that were never regarded as authentic and never included as Biblical canon is a realm that needs to be tread softly.

Indeed, there is a story here that could be wholly terrifying. That includes the notion that people who are possessed by demons speak backwards. That includes bits of foreshadowing that are so muddled, their impact is lost.

This could’ve become a new Rosemary’s Baby or Exorcist. The elements are in Undertone, but the results are not. It seems to want to be a prenatal or postnatal horror show, but it’d work better with a greater sense of heart for the lead character, Evy. There’s even a missed opportunity involving Evy’s use of sleep meditation apps and their associated audio. That could’ve been a fun side trip in this sordid tale of sound and fury.

The saddest part of this misfire is Tuason was partly inspired by the Covid lockdown and caring for his own parents while they were under treatment for cancer. If only more of that real-world humanity was present in this story, movie magic might’ve come together.

Instead, it’s a muddled conclusion that includes the death of Evy’s mother, Poltergeist-like TV interactions and insinuations of a double murder involving plastic bags that simply doesn’t gel. That last one is courtesy of one of Evy’s own neighbors calling into the podcast with the reveal of this significant narrative twist that adds to the confusion instead of the horror. It’s all so terribly unsatisfying. The pieces are there for a whopper – a doozie – of a climax that could haunt audiences on the drive home and through the night.

None of this criticism is intended to take away from Kiri’s performance. She is the glue that makes Undertone work to the extent it does. As the one person who is on-screen in almost every scene, she makes it watchable – and that includes a climactic screen-filling close-up in which she confesses to being complicit in her own mother’s death.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.