You know shit’s getting real in a horror movie when the title’s all in lowercase. Case in point: undertone, the first feature from director Ian Tuason, which is one of the spring’s big horror releases from A24. It’s part of a new subgenre of horror features that have infested festival midnighter line-ups (seriously, we can think of at least three movies like this one): Podcaster horror. After all, it’s not enough just to listen to creepy audio by yourself — would anyone have given a shit about the “Frankie Teardrop” challenge if folks weren’t recording videos of their deep-woods freakouts? — you gotta watch someone react to it. And this certainly looks very, very scary. A24 dropped a trailer for the film in advance of its premiere at Sundance later this month, and yeah, you might want to keep the lights on for this one.
Peep it:
Here’s a brief summary for undertone from the Sundance program:
“The host of a popular paranormal podcast becomes haunted by terrifying recordings mysteriously sent her way.
Strained by the responsibility of providing end-of-life care to her dying mother, Evy (Nina Kiri) seeks respite from the loneliness of her fragmented reality. Now living in a house full of sentimental keepsakes and memories, her sanity and structure lies within her work on a supernatural podcast, ‘The Undertone.’ While she usually plays skeptic to the creepy (and often disturbing) audio files sent to her by co-host Justin (Adam DiMarco) for podcast fodder, the latest submission hits differently. A series of 10 unheard recordings from a young pregnant couple are unfurled one by one, each more ominous than the last. As Evy draws parallels to her current plight, hidden messages manifest, pushing her further toward madness.
Writer-director Ian Tuason’s debut feature is unsettling to say the least. Deceptively terrifying in its conceit, Evy’s solitude manifests itself as a visceral audio-visual landscape, where the ring of a cell phone creates just as much of a jump scare as any monster ever could.”
undertone will have its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, and it’ll make it’s way to a theater near you on March 13.