Movie Review: Undertone

By John Corrado

Undertone, the creepy, slow-burn directorial debut of Toronto-based filmmaker Ian Tuason, is the latest horror movie being put out by indie powerhouse A24. And it’s the epitome of a Canadian success story, with the distributor picking up the rights for seven figures in a competitive bidding war after Tuason’s film premiered at last year’s Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal.

For a film made on a limited budget in a single house, with only one actor onscreen for much of the ninety minute running time, Undertone works as a promising showcase for what Tuason can do, that leaves us excited for whatever he does next. In this case, he just closed a deal with James Wan and Jason Blum to direct the next Paranormal Activity movie.

The film is named after The Undertone, which is the title of the podcast that our protagonist Evy Babic (Nina Kiri) co-hosts. Evy has moved back home to care for her dying mother (Michèle Duquet), and is recording episodes of the podcast alone at night. Evy’s shtick on the show is that she is a skeptic, while her co-host Justin (Adam DiMarco) is more of a true believer in the paranormal.

Justin presents her with a series of ten audio recordings sent from an unknown email address, documenting the disturbing paranormal experiences of married couple Jessa (Keana Bastidas) and Mike (Jeff Yung). As they listen through them on the show, Evy begins to experience bizarre events herself, with the recordings introducing the possibility of demonic possession.

Tuason’s screenplay cleverly unfolds around these ten tapes, which Evy is listening to live on the show, and it adds a bit of an episodic structure to the film as more information is teased out and revealed. Early on, Undertone introduces the creepy idea of hearing hidden messages in children’s songs when they are played backwards. It’s an intriguing hook for a horror movie that is all about what we hear and the power of suggestion

The main conceit of Undertone as a horror movie is that most of the scares come from the eery sound design, which is also the main selling point for seeing it in a theatre. Tuason’s small sound team does an excellent job of layering sounds and background noises to offer a disturbing and compelling auditory experience throughout, especially when heard in surround sound on massive speakers.

Tuason’s film is effective as a minimalist horror movie that plays around with unsettling sound design, but Undertone is all the more impressive as a technical achievement considering how it was pulled off. Tuason shot the film entirely in his own Rexdale home, making use of subtle but evocative production design choices. Graham Beasley’s cinematography features some clever framing, with the camera slowly panning around dark corners in the home, revealing scares in the sides of the frame.

This is very much a slow-burn, but it builds to a showstopper of an ending that alone serves as a compelling calling card for what Tuason and his small but mighty crew can pull off. The film also functions as a solid acting showcase for Serbian-Canadian actress Nina Kiri (also excellent in last year’s military biopic Out Standing).

Kiri basically carries the entire movie through her emotive performance, the camera staying locked on her face for long stretches, as she sits behind a microphone at her desk with headphones on, being increasingly creeped out by what she is hearing. We, as an audience, are too.