I finally got back to the theater this week and caught undertone (2025), a Canadian horror film with only two actors on screen. Several others, however, appear as disembodied voices. That’s the shtick here: can you do horror with just sound?
Yes and no. Movies like The Haunting (1963) long ago demonstrated that things that go bump in the night could terrify audiences. The trouble is that the scares mean little without an enticing plot. And undertone, which follows a horror podcaster as she takes care of her ailing Catholic mother, does not deliver much narratively speaking. Evy (Nina Kiri) and her cohost Justin (Adam DiMarco) receive ten recordings purporting to show a demonic possession. Evy is the skeptic, Justin the believer. You can imagine what ensues.
The cinematography is fine—some sheen, that’s to be expected. But what recommends the movie is its sound design. One has to watch this in the theater. Surround sound is a must. Undertone takes this dimension seriously and succeeds. Strange grinding sounds, unexpected screams, looped audio—it’s all here. And, while I personally never jumped out of my seat, I saw in the film the possibility of better-produced audio in horror films. It does blaze a trail, even if it does not quite accomplish its goal.
Should it still be playing where you are (and it hasn’t even come to Europe and the UK yet), I recommend seeing it. Undertone helped me dream. I couldn’t help but like it.
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