undertone (2026)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
Exceptional sound design does nearly all of the heavy lifting in this low-budget A24 horror acquisition.
First-time writer/director Ian Tuason can definitely create a sense of mood and atmosphere.
Maximizes its $500k budget with some clever visual tricks and a solid performance from lead actor Nina Kiri
NO
This would have worked so much better as a 30-minute short film.
People may get creeped out by the sound design and unsettling atmosphere, but there are far too many plot holes and logical deficiencies to make undertone mean much of anything.
Ian Tuason’s screenplay is the problem - themes are introduced but not explored, the film explodes with a nonsensical series of events and a whole bunch of exposition in the final act. Melodramatic and disappointing.
OUR REVIEW
In first-time director Ian Tuason’s new horror film undertone, marketed as “the scariest movie you will ever hear,” a clever concept built around extraordinary sound design struggles to maintain the weight of a full-length story.
There’s a moment in the 1988 film Big, starring Tom Hanks, where he sits in a board room listening to a marketing pitch on a new line of toys. An adolescent boy transitioned into an adult body after making a wish to be “big,” Hanks’ youthful character lands a job at a toy company after impressing the company’s owner. As he tries to understand the appeal of a skyscraper that transforms into a robot - Hanks simply responds by saying, “I don’t get it. What’s fun about that?”
Hold that thought.
The new buzzworthy horror film undertone (stylized in lowercase) maximizes its $500,000 budget with interesting visuals, a love of the dutch angle camera shot, stunning sound design and an intriguing concept. A paranormal podcasting team receives an anonymous email containing ten audio clips. Together, they appear to tell the story of Jessa and Mike (voices of Keana Lyn Bastidas and Jeff Yung), a married couple expecting their first child while experiencing increasingly unexplainable events involving Jessa.
Who sent the clips becomes a mystery, and after listening to the first few recordings, Evy (Nina Kiri) begins experiencing unexplained occurrences in her own home. Normally skeptical of the stories she covers with her co-host Justin (voiced by Adam DiMarco), the duo records podcast episodes built around the clips, eventually finding themselves immersed in a situation that blurs the line between fantasy, reality, and everything in between.
Other than Evy, we mainly see one other face - that of her terminally ill mother (Michèle Duquet). Evy cares for her mother, who exists in a strange, almost vegetative state. Yet, even that situation raises questions. Is she in hospice? Is she just really ill? What does Evy actually do to care for her?
undertone is filled with nagging questions like these, and they begin to weigh down the story, written by Tuason. Tuason clearly has a clever concept and a sense of the atmosphere he wants to create. The execution, however, leaves a lot to be desired.
The film’s greatest strength is in its incredible sound mix, led by veteran television sound designer David Gertsman. The strongest collaboration in undertone is ultimately the one between Gertsman and Tuason. For viewers intensely focused on what is happening in the background, on headphones, and within the film’s multi-layered soundscape, undertone can become a genuinely creepy experience.
Unfortunately, a haunting aural landscape cannot fix the film’s structural and narrative problems.
At 94 minutes, undertone feels overly long and padded for what would work best as a 30-minute short film. The idea of listening to a few clips per podcasting episode is meant to build anxiety and prolong tensions, but the narrative structure quickly feels unfathomable. If these podcasters received a mysterious and disturbing collection of audio clips, are we really supposed to believe they would not listen to all of them immediately - no matter how unsettled Justin might be?
Instead, the story pulls Evy specifically deeper into the mystery of her surroundings. Her mother sleeps and breathes through almost the entire film, while Evy talks to her without response. As the couple in the audio clips share that they are expecting a child, parallels begin to emerge between their story and Evy’s own experiences. Themes of motherhood and womanhood begin to emerge, until Tuason seems unsure of what to do with those ideas and doubles down on elaborate sound design and outlandish audio reveals.
Some viewers have compared undertone to the experimental horror film Skinamarink, a bizarre fever dream that used blurry imagery, diminished lighting, and unsettling sound design to capture a child’s fear of being alone at night.
While undertone is a far more conventional movie, Tuason shows most of his cards early. Unlike Skinamarink, there may not be walkouts, but if the film has not hooked you in the first 20 minutes, the remaining minutes will feel like an elongated bore.
Ultimately, the unraveling of the film stems from Tuason’s writing. Evy’s relationship with her mother slowly unfolds before a massive download of exposition overwhelms an already melodramatic final act. Evy and Justin seem to like each other well enough, but their behavior raises even more questions: Why wouldn’t veteran podcasters research the clips before putting them on air? Are we really supposed to believe they would listen to these recordings for the first time during a live-to-tape show?
When you step back and analyze the events of undertone, the story feels oddly adrift and lacking in real depth. And like Hanks in Big, I guess I don’t really get it.
I see what undertone wants to be. The giant skyscraper is the impressive sound design. The transforming robot is the paranormal activity that disrupts the lives of Evy and Justin. I see the symbolism. I understand there’s more happening here than two podcasters listening to weird audio.
But for all the heavy lifting done by the film’s sound mix to create a creepy and unsettling atmosphere, there’s ultimately no there there. As the credits appeared, I found myself asking the same question Tom Hanks does after hearing that sales pitch: “What’s the fun in that?”
CAST & CREW
Starring: Nina Kiri, Adam DiMarco, Michèle Duquet, Keana Lyn Bastidas, Jeff Yung, Sara Beaudin, Brian Quintero
Director: Ian Tuason
Written by: Ian Tuason
Release DateL March 13, 2026
A24