We have to be upfront with you before anything else: if you go into Undertone expecting a horror film packed with jump scares, wild action sequences, and constant movement, you are going to be frustrated. That is not the movie this is.
Undertone is a Canadian horror film written and directed by Ian Tuason, and it is his first feature. Filmed (probably) in the Toronto area, where Tuason grew up, the film is very much a product of its setting, its quiet residential streets and dated interiors seeping into every frame. The IMDB synopsis describes it as “the host of a popular paranormal podcast becomes haunted by terrifying recordings mysteriously sent her way,” which is accurate, if a little thin on the meat, as Arthur put it.
The setup is this: Evy, short for Evangeline, is the host of a paranormal podcast called The Undertone Podcast. She co-hosts remotely with her friend Justin, who lives in London. Their dynamic is deliberately constructed. Evy is the skeptic, always trying to debunk what comes in. Justin leans into the possibility that there is something real behind the stories. Together, they receive ten anonymous audio files of alleged hauntings involving a couple named Jessa and Mike. From there, the film pulls you through those recordings one by one, building pressure slowly, until everything comes loose in the third act.
We also need to mention something that tickled both Arthur and Meaghan before the episode even got going: they host a horror podcast called Grave Tone, and they are reviewing a film centered on a horror podcast called Undertone. “This is like a marriage made in heaven,” Arthur said, “or in hell. I don’t know what it is.” The connection was hard to miss.
The Cast and the Characters Doing the Heavy Lifting
The film has a lean cast, almost to an extreme. The only characters you actually see on screen are Evy, played by Nina Kiri, and Evy’s mother, who never speaks. Nina Kiri is perhaps best known for playing Alma in The Handmaid’s Tale. Justin, played by Adam DiMarco (seen in The Magicians, The Order, and the second season of White Lotus), exists entirely through phone calls and recordings. Every other character, whether it’s the couple in the haunted recordings or Evy’s absent partner, Darren, comes to you through audio alone.
This is a bold structural choice, and it works to a point. Keeping Evy in this isolated setting makes total sense for what the film is trying to do. “You want Evy in that isolated setting,” Arthur noted, because you are essentially experiencing everything through her alone. The film leans into that so hard that Meaghan gave Nina Kiri full credit for carrying roughly ninety percent of the film’s physical performance. She is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, and she pulls it off.
That said, we do think the character of Evy herself gets a little maddening to watch. Evy lives in a state of stubborn, willful denial about almost everything happening around her. Lights turning on by themselves, a sink running on its own, sounds that have no logical explanation. Her response, consistently, is to keep pushing forward as if nothing is happening. “I got to a point where I’m like, girly pop, you deserve it at this point,” Meaghan said.
Arthur understood the frustration but acknowledged the obvious: without that denial, there is no movie. You are not going to watch a 90-minute film where the main character hears one unsettling sound and immediately says, “Nope, we are done here.” You know that, we know that. It is still annoying.
The Sound Design, Cinematography, and Atmosphere That Make This Film Work
This is where Undertone really earns its praise. The film’s central engine is its sound design, and we have no notes on it. Composer Shanika Lewis-Waddell, along with a full team of sound designers, mixers, and Foley artists, built an audio experience that is very hard to shake. The scares here are auditory before they are visual.
Banging noises from the recordings begin to bleed into the walls of Evy’s house. Strange sounds from the audio files seem to materialize in the room around her. Because Evy wears headphones while recording, the only thing she hears is the podcast. You are never quite sure if what is reaching her is real or if it is leaking through from the recordings.
Cinematographer Graham Beasley did work worth noticing here as well. Arthur and Meaghan both flagged a specific technique used several times throughout the film: scenes framed and shot through mirrors, where the camera pans out, and you realize, only after the fact, that you have been watching a reflection. “It fucks with your head,” Arthur said, and he is right. It is a simple device, no special effects involved, no tricks. The disorientation it creates is its own kind of scare.
The lighting deserves a mention too. The house Evy shares with her mother is dated, carpeted, papered, and full of old lamps with different color temperatures. Some rooms are a cool white. Some are a warmer yellow. Arthur noticed how the film uses those differences to track mood, making scenes feel more unsettling or more ordinary depending on what the story needed at any given moment. And there is a recurring visual device where Evy is lit on one side of the screen while the other side sits in a dim, object-filled darkness. You know something is not there. But after years of Mike Flanagan training, as Meaghan put it, “I am always expecting something to happen in that darkness.”
The Folklore Layer and What Ties Everything Together
We think this part is what elevates Undertone from a solid atmospheric horror film to something more interesting. Evy, as mentioned, is caring for her dying mother in that same house. Her mother is deeply religious, the kind of devout where crosses hang in every room, and the house is full of religious paraphernalia. Evy did not grow up practicing, and there is a complicated, quiet tension between them that the film communicates mostly through absence.
We do not see much of their relationship because her mother is no longer conscious. We get a voicemail. In it, her mother checks in, asks if Evy is coming to mass, and ends by saying she is praying for her. “When people say I’m praying for you,” Meaghan pointed out, “it’s usually because something bad is happening.”
On top of all that, Evy discovers she is pregnant. Her partner, Darren, is useless, probably manipulative, the kind of person who calls her home while her mother is actively dying to ask her to leave and come to a party. She is very likely going to end the pregnancy. And here is where the folklore element of the recordings unlocks and connects to everything else happening in Evy’s life.
We are keeping details vague on purpose because this is one to watch. But the connection between what is haunting the couple in the recordings, what is beginning to happen to Evy, and the weight of what she is carrying emotionally and physically is very deliberate and very well considered for a first-time feature.
“That was fascinating,” Meaghan said. “Very clever.” Arthur agreed, particularly with how the film’s final moments are handled: the screen goes black, and you are left sitting in the dark with only sound. What happens is something you are left to interpret, and after everything that builds to that point, your imagination fills in the gaps pretty vividly.
Our Scores and What We Think You Should Do
Meaghan lands at a 6.5. Arthur is at a 7. They are not far from each other, and both of them are somewhere close to the film’s IMDB rating of 6.8, which Arthur clocked as a fun coincidence.
The honest version of both assessments is this: the first half is a slow burn, and it does feel slow. The framing devices and the repeated structure of moving through the recordings, while purposeful, get repetitive before the film makes its real move. There were moments where we were hoping for a variation in the pattern that never came. And the ending, while bold and atmospherically correct, felt abrupt enough that neither of them was fully satisfied walking out.
But the things this film does well, it does really well. The sound design alone is worth the price of admission. The folklore and psychological angle is clever and genuinely unsettling. Nina Kiri is good. The film is original and thoughtful for a debut feature, and we have a lot of respect for what Ian Tuason pulled off.
One very strong recommendation from both Arthur and Meaghan: if you can, watch this in a theater. The stereo sound experience, things moving from one side to the other, sounds appearing behind you, sounds falling completely silent, that is the version this film was built for. On VOD, it will still work. In a dark room with a good sound system, it will work a lot better.