When watching a horror movie with a suspenseful and unpredictable scene, your first instinct is to close your eyes or squint so all you can see are blobs of pixels, preventing any jump scares. For “Undertone,” the movie uses not only sight, but sound, making it harder for you to keep your eyes and ears open.
Directed by Ian Tuason, this film uses sound by not only experimenting the use of audio, but warping it. Traveling sound and sampled nursery rhymes distort the messages in featured songs.
The film follows a paranormal podcast, “Undertone” with hosts Evy (Nina Kiri) and Justin (Adam DiMarco) reviewing a series of 10 audio files from an anonymous email. Evy is a skeptic of the paranormal universe, while Justin, the believer, digs deeper into each hidden message, finding clues such as whispers or childish singing. As each file is opened every week and reviewed, Evy remains in denial while Justin gets progressively afraid as sinister events happen throughout Evy’s house causing her to spiral into madness.
According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, an undertone is “a low or subdued utterance or accompanying sound; a quality (as of emotion) that is present but not clear or obvious.”
What brings true terror to this film is the deliverance of how sound is traveled to the audience. The fear of the unknown of what sounds or noises are going to approach or appear in each scene.
In more subtle scenes, such as approaching a new setting (a different room in Evy’s house), the film’s silence becomes deafening until the tension breaks with an alarming noise.
The objective of traveling sound from left to right or vise versa, purposely confuses the audience in order to create fear.
During Evy’s experience while listening to the audio files, using footsteps, banging or screams, causes disorientation between the noises that are coming from inside the house or in the audio files. The headphones that Evy wears are intentional in the film, causing curiosity from the audience whether she’s hearing things or if the headphones are muffling the sound coming from her setting.
Reversed hidden messages are a main highlight of the film that creates curiosity when listening to the files. Nursery rhymes such as Ba Ba Black Sheep, London Bridge and Rock-a-Bye-Baby create uncanny and threatening hidden messages that Justin realizes while sorting through the files.
Shanika Lewis-Waddell, the score composer of the film, takes sound and travels it, bringing the noise closer and further away from the audience. She experiments with the sound by contorting it based on what the scene follows with.
Waddell creates natural sounds such as silence in a dark room at night, the distance of a clock ticking in the other room, and the sound of a kettle steaming while you’re upstairs. Hearing each footstep as if you’re waiting for someone upstairs, and the up-close breathing of Evy’s mother in bed next to her.
The graphics and cinematography follow along with sound by making the room smaller, claustrophobic and closeted.
Graham Beasley, the cinematographer, creates illusions throughout the film that make the audience see and feel the perspective of Evy.
Shots taken at a slow panel to showcase the room she is at and how living in a big house alone can create an uneasy feeling as she completes simple tasks such as washing the dishes while her back is facing the empty room. The slow panel indicates a suspenseful and impatient experience that causes you to shift your focus, avoiding the screen.
An interesting shot technique used in the film is a style of repetitive, slowly half turned shots that would collaborate with churning sounds. These shots would be taken when conflict would enter the scene, giving the viewers a scare of what will happen next.
The art of the film itself such as sound and cinematography capture the horror concept well, how it closed is a bit unfinished though.
The ending leaves with questions that weren’t answered and unverified theories due to the lack of context given at the end. Towards the end, everything seemed rushed and incomplete, jumping from one fright to another.
It was overwhelming at the end, which could have be the directors’ plan — to leave the film with the audience catching your breath while processing everything, but if the idea was to set up a sequel, it feels unnecessary.
“Undertone” is a new frightful film that emphasizes the different experimentations and importance of sound. The deliverance of sound was captivating, but eerie, giving A24 a different genre of horror.
