undertone Movie Review

“undertone” is a movie that puts the emphasis on the background sound design and spooky lighting more than what is displayed on the screen. The results are a mixed bag of muddled motives and non-frightening scares. Overall, the work is solid — mostly for the one who took this movie on her shoulders. But the end results are very slim compared to a big build up.

In the course of a few weeks, the life of Evy (played by Nina Kiri) is turned upside-down. She works out of her parent’s house. Her father has passed away, and her very religious mother is on death’s door step. Her mom (played by Michele Duquet) is upstairs, in a comatose state. She works with a partner overseas, and they create a podcast together.

The ‘undertone’ podcast takes take the logical and reasonable mind of Evy, and pairs it with supernatural supporter named Justin (voiced by Adam DiMarco). He is only contacted over the web and is never seen. They both delve into mysteries and unexplained events. She is firm hand of reason, and he is the true believer of the unnatural phenomenon. They listen to recorded events and either debunk the story or find the whisps of wonderous weirdness.

Justin has gotten an anonymous email with ten sound recordings. There is no explanation, other than these came from a married couple. Is there is some sinister story behind all these records, then the ratings for their podcast would go up. Evy and Justin agree that the recordings need to be listened to and examined for the podcast. This will be great distraction for Evy, because caring for her dying mother is getting quite difficult.

Evy cannot rely on her old boyfriend. He is a bit of a deadbeat, and she is now pregnant with a child. The effort to care for her mother is becoming a full-time job. Doing the podcast is the only thing that she believes is keeping her sane. But she doesn’t know that these ten recordings are going to push her to a new extreme. She has her small recording area set up on the kitchen table, ready to go.

Justin plays the first recording. It is obvious that there are a married couple, talking about some issues. The husband Mike (voiced by Jeff Yung) thinks that his wife Jessa (voiced by Keana Lyn Bastidas) has nightmares. He records her sleeping. But she begins to growl as if she is talking backwards. Mike wakes her up, and she is totally surprised that he thinks there is any problem.

Evy and Justin listen to more of the recordings. The married couple, Jessa and Mike, want to have a baby. But there are more weird things happening around their house. The lights are flickering, they say. The water in the sink has turn on by itself. There are more sounds of groaning and shrieking from Jessa — in her sleep. Justin play some of these little sound clips backwards. Wait — did that just sound like ‘Mike Kills all’?

Evy has some odd things that are happening around her house. There are some lights that flicker and turn on an off. There are faucets that run, after they have been turned off. There are some religious statues and figurines that are showing up where they don’t belong. Evy is wondering if some of the things that happened to Jessa are now happening to her.

The further into the ten recording, the more nervous that Justin is starting to become. There are strange stories of children’s nursery rhymes that have sinister meanings. The listen to Jessa on the recording singing these little songs. But the voice is deeper and sounds dangerous. Justin wants to stop listening to the rest of the recordings. But Evy wants to know the rest of this story. She needs to know.

The dark past of child abductions and sacrifice have been tied to these cute little songs. But now Evy hears a more ominous side to the tune. Perhaps Jessa has unwittingly invited a very dark spirit into her house, and into herself. Maybe there is a dangerous side to the stories of good and evil that Evy remembers that her mother used to tell her. But now her mother is close to death. Evy knows her mother is comatose and cannot move on here own. So how did her mother get onto the floor in her room?

Evy and Justin have done the final part of the ten recordings. Evy is the one who is level-headed and looking for the logical thinking behind these stories. But is helpless to find any answer or any explanation for these events. First, they have hear the awful outcome on the recordings. Now Evy has no way to know if she is now headed for a similar fate. Her purpose is to the cracks in the story and expose any untruths.

But what if her story is now becoming the same story as what they just listened to from Jessa? What if there is an unseen evil that has entered here house, and is grinding her sanity into a twisted wreck? What if there a possessed person that is about to bring down her world.

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“undertone” is a low-budget with a high-concept idea. Have a movie with a very limited cast and location. Rely on the sound design and dialog to deliver the scares. This almost begins to succeed, until it doesn’t. There no true ‘jump scares’ and the movie plays around with your head to make you think something terrible might happen at any second. It is set all in one house, and there really only two people ever seen.

But the pushing of the tension can only go so far. The very clever and unique sound design and mix are terrific. The work put the character Evy by Nina Kiri is really solid. But the lack of detail about what led up to Evy to be in this situation, and how it affects her, is really lacking. There is minimal character development for Evy, and absolutely non for any other character. It doesn’t matter if they are shown on the screen or not — there is nothing substantial.

The movie Writer and Director, Ian Tuason, has a good initial concept. It is left out there causing mental discomfort and distress. But there is not really a good final solution to wrap the whole thing up. There is a stressful tension build up for the entire movie. But the results are not worth your time. The movie would work better to have a little better way to tie up all the jumble of ideas. Instead, it dumps it into a pit and forgets about it.

“undertone” is a movie that really works, until it doesn’t. It takes a really good performance from the main actor but does not allow the audience to feel anything for this character. Overall, ‘undertone’ is underwhelming…