Undertone

The horror genre has spawned many sub-genres over the years, and it can be fun to see the various creative experiments and avenues horror provides filmmakers. But like all experiments, not all are successful. Some even hurt the genre. Ever since the 1999 explosive hit The Blair Witch Project, we’ve witnessed the inevitable rollout of copycats, sequels, prequels, and more, especially the now seven-film Paranormal Activity franchise, soon to be, never fear, given an eighth installment by Ian Tuason, the very director of the film under review here, Undertone.

Undertone tells the story of Evy, a young woman caring for her dying mother, played by newcomer Nina Kiri. In her free moments she runs a podcast with a male friend, Justin, played by the voice of “The White Lotus”s Adam DiMarco, who remains faceless throughout. They are examining the field of paranormal phenomena, with Evy as the designated skeptic and Justin as the dedicated believer. He currently has a series of audio files containing a young couple sent to him through email, with these audio files purportedly containing freaky sounds. Rolling her eyes, Evy tells him to start file 1.

We get the usual children and adults chanting classic children’s songs (was this ever scary or am I the only one who never once found it so, let alone at this point?) and cryptic growling messages heard only when audio is played backwards (another tired and trite checkpoint directly out of the horror playbook). Evy remains skeptical while distracted by caring for her mother and finding out some personal news of her own that will play intimately into the increasingly alarming discoveries she and Justin make as they record their podcast in fits and starts over the course of about a week.

What unfolds (no spoilers) is the alleged presence of an entity going back hundreds of years and relating to (eerie timing) the predation and sacrifice of children. This theme is in the air all around us, in both storytelling and world news. The explanation for this entity is the only intriguing and relatively interesting part of an otherwise extremely unimaginative, cliched, and un-involving film. Maybe the problem was starting the film out with the focus on something utterly abstract and unrelated to the main character before we even get an idea of who she is or why she’s at all connected to this. Even when she starts to merge with the subject of the podcast, by then we’re divorced due to the method of storytelling and the overabundance of not only cliches but boring cliches. We get lots of red light bathing the rooms, swooping and random camera movements, objects moving on their own, Evy scrawling jagged creepy women in red and black crayon, and random images of screaming women with blacked-out eyes on TV screens. (Everyone wants to re-do The Ring.)

The problem with this sub-genre that started with Blair Witch and has since given us a plethora of others is that it relies on gimmicks and concepts rather than authentic and honest storytelling. Another recent example is Smile, which builds its foundation on a concept and never character or well-plotted story. Horror, perhaps more than any other genre, relies at its root on emotionally and psychologically hooking the viewer and not letting go. That can only, with rare exceptions, be achieved by making the audience relate in some way to what is something un-relatable on the face of it. Just consider the horror classics. I don’t even have to name them.

With Undertone relying 90% on sound and almost zero actors, the gimmick is laid bare because it offers nothing else to expand on or visualize what’s happening. In the right hands, this intentional limitation could be extremely compelling and allow the viewer to fill in those gaps with their imagination. In the hands of first-time director Tuason, it just feels amateurish, empty, and even silly. Perhaps worse, it can’t hide some of the weaknesses in either acting or plotting (where it exists), as there’s nothing to fall back on besides the ever-present spectral audio. Instead it hopes to frighten you just by a lot of angry, loud shouts and static, punctuated by repetitive blackouts, some with sound and some silent. It’s smoke and mirrors. And the apparent growing connection of these sounds with the personal life of main character Evy is murky at best, because the whole thing is a nebulous mess of half-baked ideas and scare tactics. It’s utterly random that this came into her life and is taking it over. We feel no rational or emotional reasons for what’s happening. The director is throwing tricks at us and hoping they shock and horrify us. They just made me yawn and hope whatever was coming did so sooner than later so it would be over.