“Undertone” is Ian Tuason’s debut feature film about a host of a paranormal-related podcast who is taking care of her dying mother when chaos ensues. Evy (played by Nina Kiri) and her cohost Justin (played by Adam DiMarco) receive a cryptic email with 10 audio files attached. The duo working through the seemingly haunted audio files is what the film focuses on. 

Based on this description, the movie doesn’t sound notable in the slightest, and without the film’s very unique use of audio, it probably wouldn’t be. The audio was well done, to say the least. It, along with a couple good scares, made the movie for me. 

It was extremely immersive to watch in the movie theater, but with that being said the movie doesn’t really work if you don’t watch it in theaters, with a really good sound system, or with a really good pair of headphones. So, if you’re not going to watch the movie with any of those, it really doesn’t have the same effect. 

But, no matter how good the sound effects or cinematography, a good movie is nothing for me without a good plot. Now, was the plot good for “Undertone”? Yeah, I guess. The movie was definitely entertaining; there was never a boring moment. And my heart was definitely racing for the majority of the movie.

 But, you know how when you cut Swiss cheese, the more you cut, the more holes appear? That’s how thinking about this movie feels like; every hole I find, I end up finding two more. So many questions for me were left unanswered. It felt like so many different things were started. To name a few, Evy’s drawings, the statue of Mary, the children’s songs played in reverse, and more, and not a single one of these details felt complete. They started way too much they could not manage to resolve in a very fast-paced movie. 

The themes just felt very underdeveloped and unrealistic. It felt like “Undertone” was trying to do what a movie like “Hereditary” was doing with the lore aspects of the plot but fell short. “Hereditary” felt complete, all the pieces connected, and the world felt real and cohesive; “Undertone” felt rushed and like nothing made complete sense. You can make a four-hour video essay about “Hereditary,” with how good the story is, you definitely can’t do that with “Undertone”. 

But I’m a very critical person when it comes to movies and like to dive really deep in plots. I felt like this was a solid first film for Tuason, and despite my bashing on the movie for the past couple of paragraphs, I enjoyed it overall. The budget for this movie was only $500,000, and I love when people are able to make a good movie with a realistic budget. I love how Tuason was able to get my heart racing with the whole movie taking place in two to three rooms and some of the main scares happening with nothing but a completely black screen. 

Was it an absolute work of art? No. But it was an entertaining movie done uniquely and pretty well for a director’s first film and for such a small budget.

2/5 paws