\u201cUndertone,\u201d<\/a> has, at least at the outset, an appealingly stripped-down quality.<\/p>\nThe 30-something Evy Babic (Nina Kiri) lives with her dying, comatose mother (Mich\u00e8le Duquet). The movie never leaves their small, two-story home. Upstairs, Evy\u2019s mother lies wordlessly in a bed. Downstairs, Evy, at 3 a.m. puts on headphones, sits in front of a microphone and calls up her paranormal podcast co-host Justin (Adam DiMarco\u2019s voice) to talk \u201call things creepy.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a testament to Tuason\u2019s evident filmmaking talent that, with these bare bones, \u201cUndertone\u201d swells into a gripping and unsettling experience. This is a movie that summons many of its scares with a sudden boost in audio levels, the thunderous tick of a clock or the scream of \u2026 a tea kettle. It’s even rated \u201cR\u201d not for bloodcurdling violence or satanic ghouls but, simply, \u201clanguage.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s these subtle qualities that make \u201cUndertone\u201d a spare but deftly dense film and Tuason a filmmaker to watch. It\u2019s the movie\u2019s disappointing second half, though, that breaks its quiet spell. After conjuring a tapestry of tension through narrative drips, as well as literal ones, Tuason throws in the whole kitchen sink, drowning out \u201cUndertone\u201d with a cacophony of genre cliches. Ancient Christian lore is invoked, as are children\u2019s lullabies, and the riveting nuance of \u201cUndertone\u201d slips away in all the feedback.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want it to be over,\u201d Evy tells Justin. \u201cIs that a bad thing to say?\u201d<\/p>\n
Evy\u2019s mother hasn\u2019t eaten in two days, and her emotional exhaustion is clear when she first connects with her London-based co-host. You might here be wondering if the movie digs into this guilt, but \u201cUndertone\u201d is better at leaving carefully placed clues than following through on them.<\/p>\n
For the episode they begin taping, Justin tells Evy that an anonymous e-mailer has sent a mysterious message with 10 audio files. They begin listening to them one by one, while recording. In them, a married and pregnant couple, Jessa and Mike, are trying an experiment. Mike, who\u2019s doing the recording, says that Jessa talks in her sleep. In fact, it turns out she sings (\u201cLondon Bridge Is Falling Down\u201d), and it doesn’t get better from there.<\/p>\n
Our experience of this, and the eerie subsequent recordings, is entirely aural. While \u201cUndertone\u201d is far from the first horror film to grasp the power of sound design, it’s cunning in its deployment of a found-footage tale that unspools through the ears.<\/p>\n
This has to do with the recordings, themselves, but it’s also due to the vulnerable place they put Evy. Some of the best moments in Tauson\u2019s film play on our anxiety for her, as she listens in the darkened night. As the unfolding story grows closer to her, we feel like someone, at any moment, is going to emerge from a shadow while Evy, unaware sits isolated by headphones. Call it noise-canceling horror.<\/p>\n
One idea that \u201cUndertone\u201d plays is something Justin mentions: audio pareidolia, the term for when the brain imposes words or patterns out of random, disorganized sounds. As they investigate the recordings, Evy and Justin are often playing them backward. Their interpretations become ours. The movie, itself, is a jumble of auditory clues that may or may mean something.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d rather \u201cUndertone\u201d stayed on this track, but, as if fretful of being too minimalistic, Tauson piles on more layers. Evy finds out she\u2019s pregnant and isn\u2019t sure she wants to keep it. We can tell from all the Catholic accouterment around the house, Evy\u2019s mother, if conscious, might have a strong opinion on this choice. The dark origins of the children\u2019s songs, too, relate to mothers and children.<\/p>\n
But for a highly contemporary movie centered around podcasting, \u201cUndertone\u201d morphs into a quite old-fashioned thrill ride, full of Catholic idols and creaky doors and light bulbs that go in and out. Kiri is exceptional in carrying a film in which she\u2019s the only talking, present actor. But that a movie so threadbare manages to feel like too much is both the film\u2019s accomplishment and its failure.<\/p>\n
\u201cUndertone,\u201d an A24 release, opens in theaters Thursday. It’s rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language. Running time: 94 minutes. Two and half stars out of four.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Writer-director Ian Tuason\u2019s feature debut, the sonic-driven horror \u201cUndertone,\u201d has, at least at the outset, an appealingly stripped-down quality. The 30-something Evy Babic (Nina Kiri) lives with her dying, comatose mother (Mich\u00e8le Duquet). The movie never leaves their small, two-story home. Upstairs, Evy\u2019s mother lies wordlessly in a bed. Downstairs, Evy, at 3 a.m. puts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2324270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741],"class_list":["post-2324269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Movie-Review-In-Undertone-a-paranormal-podcast-turns-perilous.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2324269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2324271,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324269\/revisions\/2324271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2324270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2324269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2324269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2324269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}