Write a commentPrior to my current job, I've always worked some form of customer service.
Anyone who has worked in customer service understands all too well how awful it is. People will constantly assume that you need to do what they say and when they say it simply because they patronize your place of employment. Some people get special pleasure out of making the lives of others miserable.
There's always some kind of social element to a job. When I took the position I currently have, I did so knowing full well I wouldn't have that much interaction with people. This absolutely sounds antisocial, I understand that, but there is such a thing as burnout. Working in retail for as long as I had wore me out.
I never thought I'd be in a position where I missed it.
While this is certainly hyperbole, there are elements of retail that are better than my current position, namely social interactions. When you work retail, you do interact with people. You may not want to all the time, but at least you don't feel crushing loneliness or unbearable silence.
I work nights as a cleaner. More often than not, there are not many people in the building I work in so I've gotten accustomed to listening to podcasts while I'm doing my work. Sometimes they're comedy but, like an idiot, more often, they're true crime. Or ghost stuff. Creatures in national parks. El chupacabra, The Mothman. With the noise canceling headphones I own, it makes you feel that much more isolated.
Alone...
...Waiting for the next musical sting to set me off.
Or the next coworker of mine to come around the corner unannounced. Now, I'm a large person. I've been told I have an intimidating stature, voice. My dad said I had the eyebrows of Sam the Eagle from The Muppets. All of these things give off the impression that I'm the one making people scared over the one being scared.
This couldn't be further from the truth.
When I get shocked, like when someone comes around a corner that I'm not expecting, I yelp. And there's no manly way to yelp. A yelp is basically onomatopoeia anyway. And you don't use a deep voice to yelp. You basically turn into the old lady from Tom & Jerry.
But what is one supposed to do when one works late at night in an empty building with oneself? You can't help but get scared at things, especially the unknown. You hear a noise when you're alone and it's scary. As soon as you find out it's your idiot cat jumping at shadows, it's significantly less scary.
undertone capitalizes on this very fact. Evy (Kiri) is the co-host of a paranormal podcast. She spends the majority of her time caring for her bedridden mother. Her co-host was recently sent a series of ten recordings. As part of their podcast schtick, they decide to listen to them on air, attempting to uncover the mystery.
While I have mentioned characters besides Evy, she's pretty much alone on screen for the majority of the film. One of her mother's nurses comes in and her mother is there, but Evy doesn't substantially interact with anyone else. The isolation of her character is felt deeply by the audience. Over the next 90 minutes, we see Evy's world breakdown piece by piece. Is what she's experiencing real or some figment of her imagination?
This is a common trope in horror: put a person in a setting by themselves and have random stuff happen to them. There are quite a few successful examples of this including Polanski's Repulsion and even Raimi's The Evil Dead. To me, what matters most in a film like this is the lead performer. If they're going to be the only person on screen, they need to be up to the task.
For undertone, we thankfully have Nina Kiri in the lead. Kiri has an incredibly expressive face. She telegraphs every emotion, twisting her face into contortions, but it never feels performative or ridiculous. You're with her in that room and you want her to succeed. You feel badly for her. Sure, some of that is probably the writing, but without someone as talented as Kiri, the quality of the writing wouldn't matter much.
Is undertone scary? As I've discussed before, scary is a lot like funny or sexy. It's in the eye of the beholder. I'm sure there will be someone out there that sees this and laughs throughout. Sheesh, I even have a good friend that I watched Halloween (1978) with recently and they laughed through it.
LAUGHED!!
"What are you laughing at? You're supposed to be terrified," I exclaimed.
"I don't know. It's just kinda goofy with the clothing and the style."
It's a good thing they had their back towards me when they said this. That way, they weren't able to see my severe disappointment.
Anyway, there are those types. For types like me, I was squirming. Director Tuason gives the film enough breathing room, allowing some of the tension to stay from the first frame through the closing credits. This is unfortunately uncommon in recent films because people seemingly need to be constantly reminded of the stakes of the particular film they're watching. undertone doesn't talk down to the audience and the film is all the better for it.
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The film doesn't give you a solid answer as to what's going on the whole time. It leaves some things up for interpretation. Sometimes, that can be incredibly infuriating, but with a film like this, it kinda makes it better. It's a lot scarier when you don't know for sure. Towards the final act, the film gets into dream/nightmare logic and there is a possible solution that Evy is just sleep deprived and the spookiness caused by that.
Would this reveal make the film less scary? No, I don't think so, but leaving it a bit ambiguous makes the film linger on your mind for a bit longer.
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The adage of "aim small, miss small" comes to mind with a film like this. It doesn't have a whole lot of aspirations besides creeping the audience out and, for my money, it succeeds. I'm looking forward to whatever Tuason and Kiri have coming up in the future.
After all, it's...
Did you guys hear that?
Well, I suppose if you don't see another review beyond this one, that'll be proof what I'm hearing is not my cat.
undertone (2026)
Directed by Ian Tuason
Cast: Nina Kiri, Adam DiMarco, Keana Bastidas
Runtime: 94 minutes
MPAA Rating: R (for language)
Rating (out of ****): ***
undertone is now in theaters.
