{"id":74,"date":"2026-04-10T11:24:44","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T11:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/10\/undertone-this-creepy-sound-horror-is-utterly-terrifying\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T11:24:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T11:24:44","slug":"undertone-this-creepy-sound-horror-is-utterly-terrifying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/10\/undertone-this-creepy-sound-horror-is-utterly-terrifying\/","title":{"rendered":"Undertone: this creepy sound horror is utterly terrifying"},"content":{"rendered":"

Undertone is the terrifying feature film debut from Canadian director Ian Tuason, which promises to be the \u201cscariest movie you will ever hear\u201d.<\/p>\n

Evy (Nina Kiri) is a podcast host caring for her dying mother (Mich\u00e8le Duquet) at home. Told only from Evy\u2019s perspective, the film moves from initially creepy to utterly horrifying over a tense, tight 93-minute running time.<\/p>\n

Evy\u2019s Undertone podcast explores supernatural phenomena. Her co-host Justin (Adam DiMarco) is in another time zone, so they record online in the middle of the night, Evy\u2019s time. This veers close to the \u201cwitching hour\u201d, but as Evy is the podcast\u2019s resident sceptic \u2013 the voice of reason opposing Justin\u2019s belief in the paranormal \u2013 she is unbothered. Until she\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

For this week\u2019s instalment, Evy and Justin react to a series of mysterious recordings involving a couple: Jessa (Keana Lyn Bastidas), who has begun talking in her sleep, and her husband Mike (Jeff Yung), who records her. These clips lend the story a naturally escalating structure, as the material grows increasingly distressing and the sense of dread intensifies.<\/p>\n

As elements from the recordings seep into Evy\u2019s world and her sense of reality begins to shift, Kiri proves superb in the role. Alone onscreen aside from her unconscious mother, she balances a raw fragility with intense emotional control. Kiri carries the film almost entirely, with supporting characters reduced to voices in her headphones or on her phone. <\/p>\n

\n<\/figure>\n

Undertone\u2019s domestic setting has an uncanny familiarity to it, with soft furnishings, lamps and religious artwork bathed in cold, often unpredictably flickering light. Compounding the disquiet is the fact that Tuason used his childhood home<\/a> in Toronto as his filming location, inspired by caring for his own ailing parents.<\/p>\n

The result is an uneasy intimacy which blurs the line between personal memory and horror. This, combined with Evy\u2019s mother\u2019s impending death and the harrowing implications of the audio clips, makes the film a disturbing yet consistently absorbing experience.<\/p>\n

At times, though, Tuason leans too heavily on religious iconography to generate unease, diluting some of the originality. The film also flirts with shock value using inherently distressing subject matter, rather than fully earning its impact. <\/p>\n

Sound as terror<\/h2>\n

Sound design is Undertone\u2019s real strength. As podcast host Justin says: \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid of the dark, be afraid of the silence.\u201d <\/p>\n

The film captures the sound of podcasting with close, warm, immaculately clear voices and achieves an intimate, studio-polished quality. Building the sense of unease, there are authentic-sounding sleep-talking recordings, nursery rhymes played backwards, exaggerated household noises such as taps and whistling kettles, and prolonged silences.<\/p>\n

Other horror films such as Berberian Sound Studio<\/a>, The Black Phone<\/a> and Keeper<\/a> have harnessed the unsettling potential of sound in recent years, exploring the eerie power of disembodied voices.<\/p>\n

This is a lineage Undertone joins while carving out a more intimate horror. Tuason\u2019s film also makes narrative use of the podcast hosts\u2019 editing skills to great effect, as they speed up, slow down, reverse and replay the recordings over and over, trying to glean some sense from them. In doing so, sound becomes Undertone\u2019s primary source of terror, placing its audience in the same position as Evy.<\/p>\n

Undertone is a confident debut from Tuason, who understands exactly where the film\u2019s power lies. By grounding its horror in voice and sound, the film becomes an experience that feels immediate and inescapable.<\/p>\n

In placing us so firmly within Evy\u2019s singular perspective, Undertone crosses the boundary between listener and participant, resulting in a work which fulfils its promise of terror. It is not for the faint of heart.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Laura O’Flanagan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Undertone is the terrifying feature film debut from Canadian director Ian Tuason, which promises to be the \u201cscariest movie you will ever hear\u201d. Evy (Nina Kiri) is a podcast host caring for her dying mother (Mich\u00e8le Duquet) at home. Told only from Evy\u2019s perspective, the film moves from initially creepy to utterly horrifying over a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}