It might sound like damning with faint praise to say that the best visual moment of Ian Tuason’s feature directorial debut “undertone” is a black screen. However, it’s the truth – and meant as a compliment. For a film so fixated on provoking fear and dread through the medium of audio, it’s naturally strongest when it does not bother to stimulate the eyes at all.
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The aural texture in “undertone” is the stuff of nightmares, especially for anyone who finds children’s songs strike a particularly terrifying tenor. Tuason is not just doing sonic adornment as a boondoggle here, though. His subject, Evy (Nina Kiri), is a podcaster who spends her days surfing audio waveforms in the paranormal space. His focus suits the subject.
Apparently, “undertone” does not take place in the immediate present day because she and her co-host, the more credulous Justin (Adam DiMarco), have not made the pivot to video like every other podcast. Her partner remains unseen throughout the entire film, as does everyone else save for Evy’s ailing mother (Michèle Duquet). Tuason proves skilled at conjuring presence through absence, something that the horror genre shares with the audio medium at large. By leaving gaps in the information he conveys, the brain has to rush in and fill the void.
“undertone” trains its audience to key into a conspiratorial mindset as Evy and Justin fall down a Wikipedia rabbit hole about popular nursery rhymes and their sinister origins. They both admit to playing characters for their listeners, but Evy’s mask of default skepticism begins to slip the more that they start trying to unpack some mysterious audio files she received over email. While their initial investigation seems to point toward dwelling in the subgenre of creepy kids, the recurrence of an infertility demon known as Abyzou begins shifting the terrain more toward religious folk horror.
All the while, Evy feels as alone in her home as Tuason makes her appear in the visualization of his story. She remains largely homebound due to caretaking responsibilities for her mother. Eva might talk to a nurse, but that figure remains unseen (and could potentially be a figment of her imagination). Adding a pregnancy scare on top of that stress makes her uniquely prone to start falling apart.
Kiri, in what essentially amounts to a solo show, does a fine job creating the stakes of her character’s breakdown with so little to act opposite. Yet Tuason never matches her performance with the film’s look. “undertone” strains to find a visual language to convey the sense of claustrophobia that tips the character toward believing in the supernatural power of the audio files she possesses.
It’s rare to witness such a disconnect between the attention paid to sound and image. More films willingly discount the former in favor of the latter, a trend that “undertone” bucks by reversing the sensory element it prioritizes. Tuason’s film sounds like an expert work of sound design, but looks – and thus feels – put together like a student project.
Cinematographer Graham Beasley and editor Sonny Atkins never settle on a coherent syntax for how the camera will convey Evy’s isolation, so the film ends up feeling like a visual grab-bag to watch unfold. Shot selection in the film proves genuinely baffling. A scene will start with a long shot that places Evy low in the frame, then cut to a close-up of her in profile, with no apparent motivation. Oh, and pepper in a few Dutch angle shots as well to shake up the rhythm a bit. This haphazard visual approach begins to grate quickly as it devolves into variety for variety’s sake.
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This uninspired approach to imagery stands in stark contrast with the multi-layered sonic collage, especially the masterfully mixed finale. Tuason builds in cuts to black that last longer than the average scene transition, allowing the audience to fully engage with the soundscape. These breaks function like an implicit concession that he’s made a film more worth listening to than watching. [C+]
“undertone” releases in theaters on Friday, March 13.