Sound is everything in The Undertone. It’s a film about a horror podcaster, so it makes sense that the sound design plays an important role. It’s more than that, though; more so than any other recent horror film, The Undertone lives and dies on how sound and silence is used. And it is used incredibly […]
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One of the film’s creepiest recurring elements is the creepy use of Baa Baa Black Sheep, which is played backwards and at various unsettling speeds. A key feature of the film is that Jemma and Mike’s audio files aren’t always clear, which requires Evy to frequently pause and restart sections, or crank the volume, or isolate a portion of the audio track and play it on a repetitive loop. Tuason shoots this in close-up inserts, as if to remind us that the audio is literally the most important element.
The result is both hypnotic and engrossing; these long stretches of Evy struggling to decipher what she’s hearing are so well done that audiences may find themselves empathetically leaning in and straining alongside her.
The result is an immediate and undeniable alignment with Evy. We’re along for every desperate web search; every creak from the floorboards above; every hair-raising development as Evy and Justin close in on the end of the ten audio files and inevitable doom. By the time the film reaches its sonically-oriented climax and all hell breaks loose, viewers have been primed to listen attentively to every aspects of the soundtrack – from the cheerily warped children’s voices all the way to the demonic voices.
That such a simple concept works as well as it does is a minor miracle. There’s nowhere for Tuason to hide if any element of the film were off balance: the entire enterprise rests on Kiri, the sound, and the slow, methodical movement of the camera, which slowly and frequently pans to fill the screen with negative space that anticipates something terrifying. Occasionally something is there (a tease of a specter in the mirror; a head turn from Mama), but just as often nothing happens. As a result even the simplest motion feels like it could erupt into a full-blown panic attack.
All of this anticipation comes down to the resolution, which incorporates all of the movie’s bag of tricks to stunning effect including an extended black-out sequence that relies entirely on the audio to produce spin-tingling thrills. While some may find the ending slightly disappointing, there’s no denying the film’s visceral impact right up until the final frame. I can’t remember the last time a movie made every hair on my body stand up, but The Undertone got me good.
The Undertone had its world premiere at Fantasia International Film Festival. Release info TBD.
