Undertone (dir. Ian Tuason)

by Jack Martin | Apr 12, 2026

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 94 mins

UK Distributor: Vertigo Releasing

UK Release Date: 10 April 2026

WHO’S IN UNDERTONE?

Nina Kiri, Adam DiMarco, Michèle Duquet, Keana Lyn Bastidas, Jeff Yung, Sarah Beaudin, Brian Quintero

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Ian Tuason (director, writer), Cody Calahan and Dan Slater (producers), Shanika Lewis-Waddell (composer), Graham Beasley (cinematographer), Sonny Atkins (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A podcaster (Kiri) investigates some eerie recordings of the supernatural…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON UNDERTONE?

A movie about a podcast is a bit of a conundrum. How does one take something designed entirely for audio consumption and adapt it into a visual medium? Not only that, but seeing someone primarily sitting in front of a microphone and chatting into it for however long doesn’t exactly scream “cinematic.” If you screw it up, you’ll just get an audiobook set to a few images every now and then. But filmmaker Ian Tuason, with his unsettling debut feature Undertone, surprisingly makes the transition easier than it should be.

The writer-director turns the visual filmic experience into a purely audible one without sacrificing any of its cinematic quality, allowing the terror of things we cannot see but very much hear to become a sensory minefield where your ears are always on edge as much as your eyes are. It’s enough to where the film, even at times when it doesn’t fully take advantage of its unique setup, can send genuine chills down your spine and straight to your eardrum.

It is a chamber piece, set entirely within the home of Evy (Nina Kiri) where, in between caring for her dying comatose mother (Michèle Duquet), she regularly records a horror podcast with her remote friend Justin (Adam DiMarco). She plays the sceptic to his true believer in the supernatural as they investigate paranormal occurrences and attempt to either confirm or debunk their legitimacy, with their latest subject coming in the form of ten audio files that seemingly capture the unusual and increasingly disturbing encounters between couple Mike and Jessa (Jeff Yung and Keana Lyn Bastidas, respectively) and a mysterious presence. But as Evy dives deeper into the recordings and conducts further research, namely into the rather dark messages hidden within classic nursery rhymes, while also coming to grips with her mother’s impending death as well as an unexpected development in her own life, the harder it becomes to deny the spooky events that are engulfing her.

Evy and her immobile mother are the only people who are ever visible on the screen, with every other character depicted via voiceover or conveniently positioned off-camera, adding to the isolation felt within our protagonist as she slowly succumbs to the fear and helplessness of her situation. The limited visual scope helps Tuason to further emphasise the auditory experience, as a majority of the action is conveyed through these recordings while Evy simply sits there listening to them with her headphones on, the audience similarly forced to hear every uncomfortable sound that she picks up, whether it’s playing the likes of “Baa Baa Black Sheep” in reverse or the decisively unwholesome voice box of a pull-string doll. The impressive sound design creates a number of chilling noises which, in a slight twist on the classic “show don’t tell” rule of filmic storytelling, can all too easily be envisioned in viewers’ heads rather than it being projected right there on the screen, adding up to a pretty creepy audio-based environment.

Even with that, Tuason still remembers how important the visuals are. With cinematographer Graham Beasley, he makes the enclosed and often darkly lit property where we spend the entire movie feel at times like a classic haunted house, complete with an imposing staircase and the occasional crucifix hung up in the hallways, while also making effective use of space and lighting to cleverly draw our attention to the background in anticipation of a demonic apparition suddenly turning up out of nowhere. Even when that doesn’t happen, you’re still always on edge as the audio continues to create a chilling enough atmosphere to make the area immediately surrounding our troubled podcaster so unpredictable and nerve-wracking that it constantly leaves you in a shaken state, while Nina Kiri easily carries the film with a grounded sensibility which makes her eventual terror feel all the more real.

However, while there are plenty of strong qualities to its name, Undertone doesn’t entirely make good on its potential. As well-executed as the sound-based terror is, the fact remains that it is fairly limited in what it can and can’t physically do on the screen, so it quickly settles into a static and sometimes repetitive sequence of events that can drag the pacing considerably down. It does also play into some familiar horror movie tropes which at this point are inevitable for a film like this, but nonetheless take you out of the experience to remind you that you are, indeed, watching a movie. Without spoilers, it’s also the kind of horror that more or less just ends, intentionally leaving certain threads dangling in favour of a spooky and certainly effective climax that grows and grows until it just… stops. Of course, it’s nowhere near as anti-climactic or sudden as something like The Devil Inside, but I imagine that the lack of a proper resolution will likely irritate certain audiences who aren’t as in tune with the typical A24 style of elevated artistic horror.

But while those flaws can sometimes be glaring, Undertone is an impressive experiment that seeks to redefine what cinema can be from an entirely different sensory perspective. It may not entirely succeed, for visuals will always be paramount over any and all audio tracks in the world of film, but Tuason gives it a damn good try and comes away with a genuinely creepy and very well-made debut feature to be proud of. Fittingly, he’s been listed as the director for an upcoming new entry in the Paranormal Activity franchise due out next year, which makes total sense seeing how he’s already more or less nailed the audiobook version.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Undertone is an effective auditory horror experience that utilises some impressive sound design and unsettling if limited visuals to create a genuinely creepy atmosphere predominantly from the power of sound, though often it falls just a bit short of realising its full potential as a cinematic horror.