UNDERTONE Should Have Been a Podcast 

Over a decade into the primacy of so-called “elevated horror” era–– arguably launched in the early 2010s by films like It Follows (2014)–– the slow-burn vibe and “atmospheric” aesthetics of the amorphous category of horror films that A24 helped to mainstream have begun to enter the realm of parody. So it is about half the time with Undertone, a slender if highly watchable and stealthily goofy chiller that dares to ask, “What if Paranormal Activity was meditative?” Given the somber early press for this film, I was surprised to find that, in this creepypasta tale of haunted podcasts, pregnant Catholic girls, and dying parents, it’s the unsubtle spirit of the aughts that’s risen from the grave more than anything else, transformed into something that both lacks that previous horror era’s jittery bite and never quite sets its sights higher than delivering the now-signature dread that still marks the current one either. Canadian first-time feature director Ian Tuason originally conceived of this story as a radio play, and genre fans familiar with this particular mixed bag of tricks (think Insidious meets Presence meets Berberian Sound Studio) may find themselves thinking, “This should have been a podcast.” 

The story is a profoundly simple one: While caring for her comatose, devoutly Catholic mother (Michèle Duquet) in the days leading up to her inevitable demise, newly pregnant podcaster Evy (Nina Kiri) copes by drinking whiskey from a coffee mug and burying herself in her work. As she and her long-distance cohost, Justin (Adam DiMarco), work on the next episode of their paranormal investigation series, their latest case, a mysterious email full of eerie recordings, drives the already strained young woman to the brink. Questions abound: Will she keep her baby? Is her mother possessed by a child-hating demon? Is she? How much of one 85-minute movie can legally be an extended version of the Googling montage from Twilight? If you don’t send this email to ten of your friends, will you actually be visited by the girl from Ringu? Is “Baa Baa Black Sheep” actually about killing kids? Are those childlike crayon drawings Evy obsessively scribbles during recording sessions the best way to explore any of this? Find out next week on… 

Okay, that’s a little harsh. There’s an effective core of emotion at the center of this film that deserves respect, even if the surrounding story isn’t nearly adequate enough to bring out its full potential, at least in a theatrical setting (watching it alone on a laptop in the dark late at night may be a different story). It’s undeniable that Tuason has delivered viewers something deeply personal–– Undertone was shot in his childhood home where he served as his parents’ caretaker during their terminal illnesses–– but unfortunately, this particular thread is never fully developed beyond an inarticulate if visceral feeling of loss, finding itself subsumed by this formulaic mashup of classic horror narratives. There are three elements (pregnancy, haunted podcast, dying Catholic mother) and none of them ever really deepen into anything greater than the sum of their parts. The Catholicism-infused pregnancy plot, a potential source of real drama, is communion wafer thin, the meat of the recordings that haunt the film’s protagonist is textbook possession movie fare (I kept thinking about The Devil Inside, goofy new media and all), and the familial grief underneath both of these stories is kept at a disappointing arm’s length. 

The profound contrast between these thin stock elements and the film’s churchlike tone, then, paired with the fact that there are remarkably few actual scares in this horror film, which largely relies on ambient tension and the occasional jumpscare, can sometimes lead to unintentional black comedy. In fact, the film’s delightful marquee setpiece, set during a sleep meditation, shines precisely because it manages to warp that dark humor and “up too late on the internet watching creepypasta” sensibility into something fresh, fun, and melancholy, too. Other frights either jolt you only to deflate, or occur sonically over a black screen, a gambit that The Vast of Night used to virtuosic emotional effect in 2019, but that’s overused here when the visual and thematic landscape around them lack true substance. Similarly, the cinematography defaults to a plethora of au courant locked down slow pans that are made frustrating when the camera finally gets a move on in some of the film’s later sequences. 

All this to say that, as the name might suggest, heartfelt or not, Undertone is mostly a vibe-piece–– a thin 2000s horror narrative wrapped up in a 2020s look and feel. That said, a vibe isn’t always a bad thing! At the screening I attended, groups of friends had an audibly great time gasping, yelling, and laughing during this haunted house flick. I did too. In that way at least, the unexpected 2000s flavoring of this latest “atmospheric” A24 film pays off.