Inner Demons: Film Review of Undertone
★★★1/2
Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
These are scary times—not only in an existential sense, but also in the world of cinema, specifically in the arena of the horror film. In recent weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to review Obsession, Backrooms, Companion, The Bride, Frankenstein, Weapons, Send Help, and Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. While Good Luck is technically a science-fiction hybrid, it still contains elements of the recent renaissance of the horror genre—including dark comic turns, sinister atmospheric settings, and haunting sound designs.
This is only the most recent wave in this latest oeuvre of the modern horror movie. Robert Eggers, Guillermo del Toro, Jordan Peele, and Ari Aster (to name a few) have been producing a new brand of thoughtful, socially conscious, and psychologically penetrating horror films for the last decade, spawning fascinating forays into cross-genre projects. Films like If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You, while not technically horror, step in and out of horror tropes almost effortlessly. Sinners finds a delicate (and somehow plausible) balance between issues of racism and equity with a vampire attack.
Undertone is the latest to join the ranks of these sophisticated existential horror flicks. The film follows Evy (Nina Kiri), a podcaster who has returned to her family home to care for her dying mother who is in a coma. Evy has little contact with the outside world. Her podcasting partner Justin (Adam DiMarco) is the believer half of their podcast team while Evy is the rational and logical half—the doubter. The name of their podcast is Undertone, a program focused on the supernatural and occult.
As the film opens, Justin tells Evy that he received a cryptic anonymous email with ten audio files attached and proposes they play them, and then possibly incorporate them into a show. The first few files reveal a young couple named Mike and Jessa. Mike says he is recording Jessa to prove to her that she talks in her sleep. The recording reveals that Jessa is singing “London Bridge” in her sleep. Justin hears something odd in the file and plays it backwards, revealing an ominous message. He tells Evy that many children’s nursery rhymes containing horrifying and ominous images. Evy, ever the skeptic, dismisses Justin’s fears, but goes ahead and researches “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep”, the song her mother used to sing to her as a child, and discovers that when played backwards, it also contains a horrifying message.
In the meantime, Evy is taking care of her mom, who seems to be on a rather rapid decline, having not eaten in days. In one scene, a nurse (either by phone or Zoom) tells Evy her mom is close to death. Not the most dedicated caregiver, Evy lets her boyfriend persuade to come to a party at her house. When she returns the next morning, Evy finds her mother sprawled on the floor. She puts her back in bed and apologizes profusely.
Evy begins to notice strange things happening. Lights turn on and off unexpectedly. A religious statue somehow mysteriously finds its way to her mother’s bedstand. Water faucets turn off and on with no warning. Evy, who apparently had an abuse problem, starts drinking again.
She and Justin continue to listen to the audio files which reveal that Mike and Jessa are caught up in a frightening situation. At times, during her sleep, Jessa seems to take on frightening personalities. She sleepwalks, and the couple, who we discover are pregnant, begin hearing the disembodied cries of a baby. Along Evy discovers she is pregnant, but, while telling her mother, confesses that she doesn’t believe she would be a good mom.
The strange phenomena occurring around her finally get to Evy. Despite Justin’s warnings, she plays the final audio file which unleashes an awful and horrible entity determined to wreak revenge on the innocents of the world.
While the plot devices and horrors surrounding Evy and her mother are nothing new, drawing from such sources as The Blair Witch Project, The Exorcist, and almost every haunted house movie ever made, director Ian Tuason has created an atmosphere of such omniscient and overpowering dread that even the most mundane everyday occurrence is fraught with foreboding and suspense. It is beyond creepy.
The house itself, full of windowed doors, mirrors, and open spaces, seems to be patiently waiting for the chance to reveal its dark secrets—almost to the point where it becomes a character unto itself. In scene after scene, while Evy sits in a darkened room working the podcast, the camera pans slightly to the left, revealing a light turning on upstairs or a shadowy figure on the stairs. While the audience sees these occurrences, Evy does not, but every now and then will tilt her head as if sensing something.
The sound design of Undertone is integral to the film’s premise. The hidden messages in the audio files are key to the mysterious happenings in the mother’s house, yet Tuason takes the reality of the audio recordings one step further—one step beyond, if you will. Whenever Evy puts on her noise-cancelling headphones, the outside world is muted. She becomes immersed into the podcast and the sinister audio files. The reality of her mom is—for the moment—cancelled to her.
In another innovative turn used by Tauson, the camera never leaves the house. Evy does, to go to her party, but the camera stays. It pans, zooms, and focuses beyond and through the space. It seems to know things Evy does not. In a sense, it is the embodiment, the soul of Evy’s childhood home—her mother’s house.
In Freudian psychoanalytic theory, a house can be interpreted as a symbol of the human body and enclosed places within it might signify motherhood, while in Jungian psychoanalytic theory (Reinventing Home) , the house represents the self as different levels might signify the conscious and unconscious self.
Reading Undertone through this sort of critical lens may be a revelation of the guilt Evy feels for wishing her mother was no longer a burden—which she says at one point—or later confessing she broke a promise to her mother. In that case, the entity that enters Jessa’s dreams, and the reason Evy is afraid to sleep, might be a manifestation of that guilt. Or sometimes, as Freud said, a cigar is just a cigar.
In terms of acting, this is pretty much a one-woman show. This is Evy’s movie. We hear disembodied voices and see her comatose mom, but it is Evy we follow. Her exasperation, frustration, and irritation build as the weirdness mounts, but she never seems motivated to leave. If anything, she is a prisoner of the house—of herself and her mother.
Nina Kiri’s portrayal of Evy has just the right combination of strength, dutifulness, arrogance, smugness, and stubbornness. For the most part, she hits the right notes at the right time, but occasionally her steadfastness is a little too strong. At some points in the story, she should be scared out of her mind but doesn’t show it. Whether that is her decision or the director’s, it undermines our belief in the character.
Undertone is a very good movie. It is not only one of the creepiest psychological thrillers I’ve seen in a long time, but it also raises fascinating questions about the nature of motherhood, filial duty, religion, and identity.
I usually recommend seeing a film in a theater anyway, but in this case, I would definitely advise the viewer not to see it at home—unless you have all the lights on.
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