Undertone (2026) – Underdone

Released: 25th July
Seen: 9th August

In 1927, the film The Jazz Singer came out and changed the world. While it was possibly the first film to use sound (depending on how we want to define it there are several candidates for the first sound picture), it was certainly the first to be popular and to allow the use of audible dialogue, and so, with the simple line “You ain’t heard nothing yet”, that film entered the history of cinema as an important benchmark (even though that benchmark comes with a notable history of racism… but so does most early cinema, let’s be honest). Since then, sound has been an essential element of the cinematic experience; it can make or break a film. There are countless stories of films that were deemed to be bad because they didn’t have the soundtrack completed yet, a bad sound mix can make a serious scene into an accidental comedy, there’s an absolutely hilarious version of the trailer for The Mummy that muted the wrong audio track which became the only interesting thing about that movie. Sound is important and so when a horror film sells itself on its sound by saying it’s the scariest movie you’ll ever hear you hope that it can deliver on that… in the cast of Undertone, it sounds good but I’ve heard scarier.

Undertone follows the most repulsive kind of human being on the planet… podcasters. In this case, a young woman named Evy (Nina Kiri) is recording her horror podcast over the phone with her friend Justin (Adam DiMarco). The podcast, coincidentally named Undertone, is built around talking about supernatural occurrences with the gimmick that Evy is a full-blown sceptic while Justin is a believer. Evy is also doing this while taking care of her sick/dying mother, a job that she can apparently just ignore every day while recording a podcast with noise-cancelling headphones because that’s a thing that caregivers in that situation would totally do ANYWAY. Justin presents a story for the podcast about a couple who recorded weird things happening at night. There are 10 recordings; over the course of recording the podcast all 10 recordings will be played and as one might expect, that means shit allegedly gets weirder and weirder until eventually a really bad thing happens after the 10th one is played. 

One thing that Undertone undeniably does well is building a certain tone up over the course of the film. Its impressive sound design really sets things up well and with the camera just holding on certain shots for a long time you really do get the sensation that there could be something happening at any moment in the background. That classic staple of the genre where some creepy audio gets played and the camera holds on a doorway just long enough for you to see a figure just at the edge of frame works for a reason and this film really does do a great job at setting those moments up and getting you to really pay attention… and then you notice that, despite all that build up, the film isn’t actually showing you anything even remotely unnerving and it stops working.

Overtone overdoes the building of tension to the point where it’s basically cinematic edging, in that I’m being denied release for over an hour and a half and unfortunately whatever happens at the end is the most pathetic climax one could imagine. It’s long held shots of a person listening to audio files before they jump suddenly as though something scary had happened when, in fact, nothing whatsoever actually happened. No creepy imagery, nothing falls and breaks, no one appears behind them and then vanishes while the main character is looking. It’s like the film forgets to be a horror movie for 83 minutes and then goes “oh shit, this is a horror film, I better do something scary” and then throws a bunch of flickering lights and loud noises about hoping that legally counts as a climax. I’m sorry movie, you edged me too long, I’m no longer interested in your climax.

What’s perhaps most annoying is that what visuals they do have (outside of, ya know, a woman sitting at a laptop recording a podcast) has the potential to set up some actually scary scenes. Anytime the audio clips play that make up the central tension of Overtone, the camera moves as though we’re following what happens in the audio so if the people in the recording talk about finding something in the sink, the camera moves over to the sink of our main character’s house. It tries (adorably) to put you in the world of the audio recording that the main character is listening to, let your mind create the horror and all that, which would be great if it led to something but after a while I’m just looking at the architecture of a pretty nice two-story house I’ll never own thanks to the utter disaster of a housing market. So I’m no longer scared, I’m irritated. Thanks movie, you edge me for an hour and a half and you rub your upper-middle class wealth in my face, JUST FUCKING SCARE ME!

It must be pointed out that the one truly impressive element of Overtone is the lead actress, Evy is really the only person that we see on screen for the entire runtime with the exception of her dying mother in a few shots when Evy remembers to go upstairs to check on the old dying woman she’s meant to be taking care of. It’s kind of impressive how she’s almost selling this as an actually scary event, you can certainly tell that the character is scared which does help a little with the building of the tension (before that building eventually crumbles) and it takes some real talent to make you want to sit and watch someone record a podcast for an hour and a half. It’s the kind of performance that makes you really wish that the movie was better than it was so you could feel good about telling people to see it.

Undertone has got some good ideas and a lot of elements that could make for an interesting film but the inability to let that tension out occasionally or give it all a worthwhile payoff is just sad. It’s sad, it’d be really nice if this kind of film could work because it’s so simple and cheap and has so much potential but it doesn’t. All the good ideas in the world don’t mean a goddamn thing if you can’t do what you need to do, and a horror film needs to be scary at some point. This just doesn’t do it, you do not need to release this specific podcast.