Sundance Film Festival,<\/a> it had some calling it the \u201cscariest movie you\u2019ll ever hear.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cUndertone\u201d is a minimalist horror, set in one location, with essentially one character. Evy (Nina Kiri) is a paranormal podcaster who is taking care of her dying, comatose mother upstairs. She\u2019s the skeptic of the podcast, which she does with a remote co-host (Adam DiMarco) in the middle of the night. Nothing can scare her, but this new investigation, in which they try to decode a series of unnerving audio files sent anonymously, has rattled her.<\/p>\n
Why sound is so scary<\/h2>\n
Tuason always dreamed of being a filmmaker, but he began his career in virtual reality and made a name for himself as an early proponent of immersive 3D sound for his cinematic horror shorts, which have been viewed millions of times. Soundscapes became his calling card. So, when he sat down to write \u201cUndertone,\u201d he included every audio cue, resulting in a 250-page script.<\/p>\n
\u201cSound in movies, it makes space for the audience to imagine what they\u2019re not seeing,\u201d Tuason said. \u201cWhatever you imagine that\u2019s scary is going to be way scarier than what I can show you. There\u2019s going to be millions of different versions of this movie in millions of minds and that\u2019s all because of the power of suggestion driven by sound and a lot of negative space.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the process of shooting, he even found himself taking out a lot of the visuals he thought he\u2019d need, stripping it down to its barest form: A woman listening to audio clips through her noise canceling headphones and freaking herself, and the audience, out. They figured it out with the help of a local Toronto postproduction studio, REDLAB. When A24 came on board to distribute the film, they were able to do the mix again in Dolby.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely meant to be seen in the theater in Dolby, because that is the exact vision that Ian had,\u201d said producer Cody Calahan. \u201cBut at home, on headphones, alone, it is a different experience \u2026 You can kind of watch it twice.\u201d<\/p>\n
The personal story behind the film<\/h2>\n
Behind the film is a deeply personal story of demons, loss and grief. In 2020, during the pandemic, both his parents received terminal cancer diagnoses, and he moved back home to their Toronto suburbs to care for them. His mom died a few months later, followed by his father two and a half years later. During that time, Tuason was drinking a lot too, but also writing, melding together an audio play he\u2019d created with the story of a lone caregiver.<\/p>\n
He wrote it figuring that he\u2019d just have to make it himself with whatever resources he had. It could be set in his childhood home (nothing to rent) and feature one actor (\u201cI could afford that,\u201d he said). And he didn’t hold back: Even he was surprised by his own capacity for honesty about some of his darkest moments.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t really have to write in a way where I\u2019m trying to pitch it,\u201d Tuason said. \u201cI think that\u2019s what gave it its honesty. Because I was going to make it either way.\u201d<\/p>\n
His main character, Evy, is him, he said. But he wrote Evy as a woman and not a man because, Tuason said, he needed the character to face a choice that would change their life; He couldn\u2019t think of anything bigger than the question of whether to have a child.<\/p>\n
Throughout it all Tuason worked on himself as a person too, leaving the skeptic behind and turning into a believer, he said. He knows the Evys of the world will doubt it, but he sees meaningful connections everywhere now; Even in the film\u2019s release date that he had nothing to do with.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a miracle that I made this thing and then A24 bought it, and then Sundance and then the release on Friday the 13th,\u201d Tuason said. \u201cMy dad passed on Friday, the 13th. And March was the last month I had with my mom.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s next: Paranormal Activity and Kung-Fu<\/h2>\n
Though moviegoers might just be discovering Tuason, Hollywood has already taken notice. In December, he was tapped to direct a new \u201cParanormal Activity\u201d film. He knows that horror is what people want from him, and as a self-proclaimed people pleaser he wants to do that too. But he does have dreams of delving into other genres as well, like science fiction and, eventually, Kung-Fu.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be modern day Kung-Fu,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But now, he\u2019s focused on getting \u201cUndertone\u201d out to the world. And he\u2019s grateful that he\u2019s starting to see it as a film and a character, separate from himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s starting to feel less and less like me,\u201d he said. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t any separation for the longest time, but now I watch it in the theater and I\u2019m a little bit more distanced \u2026 now I can look at it and kind of just focus on the technique, the art and have it live as a thing separate from me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/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.voiceofalexandria.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 Alfred Hitchcock famously claimed he didn\u2019t watch his films in theaters. When asked if he missed out on hearing the audience scream, he said, \u201cNo. I can hear them scream when I\u2019m making the picture.\u201d While Ian Tuason, the mind behind the buzzy new auditory horror \u201cUndertone,\u201d reveres and references Hitchcock […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2324921,"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":[25177],"tags":[21741,21912,23522,450553],"class_list":["post-2324960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-podcasts","tag-undertone-movie-ian-tuason-interview"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Minimalist-horror-Undertone-uses-audio-and-soundscapes-to-scare-you.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324960","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=2324960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2324961,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324960\/revisions\/2324961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2324921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2324960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2324960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2324960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}