Undertone (2025)★ 6.2/10

Horror continues to thrive this decade. The newest is A24’s Canadian horror UNDERTONE. I went into this expecting a bad story with cheap jump-scares. Boy am I happy to be wrong. Evy (Nina Kiri) is a podcaster who moves back home to care for he dying mother. She records a podcast with her friend Justin (Adam DiMarco) called The Undertone Podcast. Evy plays the skeptic while Justin plays the believer. They get an anonymous email that has 10 audio recordings in it. They decide to listen to these for the podcast. As they go through each one, things start happening, as they often do in a horror film. The feeling of paranoia gets heightened. Curiosity is a powerful motivator. You know these guys shouldn’t listen to these audio files. You know bad things will happen when they do, but they, and you, are too curious. You want to hear all 10, damn the consequences. This movie is locked in one house, making it feel claustrophobic. There’s a great use of space, including some unique camera tilting that gives us a feeling of dread. Often, the camera is aimed in between our protagonist and a dark hallway, where you can’t help but look to see if something is there. This is heightened when Evy puts on her headphones, cancelling out all noise. You start to question yourself, questioning if you’ve seen or heard something. This is called audio pareidolia. This movie doesn’t hold your hand through the nightmare. It doesn't spoon-feed the plot to your distracted minds. It forces you to pay attention to what is being said and heard. This is where the brilliant chill-inducing sound design comes in. I was genuinely freaked out for a lot of the short runtime. It’s meant to disturb you. The atmosphere is foreboding and threatening. This has a slow burn that has a great and scary payoff. To be fair, I know people who hate this movie. You might hate this. You could think there’s no story, or it’s boring, or the ending is underwhelming. I’m just not one of those people. It’s remarkably effective and diabolically immersive. This literally cost half a million dollars, talk about efficient use of funds! If writer/director Ian Tuason could put this out as his feature debut, I’m excited to see what he does with the reboot of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. After seeing what he’s done here, I believe he has what it takes. Overall, the well-crafted UNDERTONE accomplishes what it sets out to do, costing a fraction of what movies usually cost. I would say see it in the theater, but it might not be there much longer, so I’ll now say see this using noise-cancelling headphones, trust me. Remember, it wants to be heard.

i found out nursery rhymes were coded satanic messages when i was like 12. catch up guys

It's a pretty creepy and fun horror film. Unique as well. Feels like the type of movie you can watch with friends and kind of joke around, but then it does have it's more scary moments. Maybe it wasn't great, but it was a movie worth experiencing.

El nivel de sugestión que tiene esta película, increíble. Los encuadres guían la mirada hacia rincones semi iluminados o detrás de la protagonista, para ver cosas que no están ahí. El diseño de sonido, escalofriante.