What Makes This Netflix Release Stand Out?
Do you enjoy creepy audio? This could be stories, audio books, soundtracks, even podcast. Well, if you decide to watch Undertone, you may think twice before loading up a new spooky track. The host of a popular paranormal podcast becomes haunted by terrifying recordings mysteriously sent her way. So, the whole marketing around this film is centered on the idea that it is the scariest movie you’ll ever hear.
If they’re going to accomplish that, the sound design has to be perfectly on point, which puts a ton of pressure on the sound team to create an atmosphere that invites us in and introduces a creep factor that is going to make us forget our shorts. Now, the story follows a podcaster and her co-host, Eevee and Justin, respectively, and they do a weekly show called Undertone, where they examine some spooky ideas. When Justin gets a cryptic email with 10 audio files, he and Eevee slowly dive into them as they record. And all the while, Eevee is caring for her mom, who appears to be slowly dying from some unknown condition. That’s not the point of the film.
The reason that she’s sick isn’t important. It’s the time, the toll, and the effort that Eevee exerts in her caregiving, which then works to erode Eve’s stamina and potentially even her sanity. This is a stripped down film with a minimal cast and even less shown on screen. Most of the actors who are in this only lend their voices, making the performances all the more powerful when they can elicit goosebumps from their words and their inflections. Now, Eevee and her mom are the only ones we really see throughout the whole 93 minutes, which could sound a bit dull from a visual perspective, but this is anything but lazily presented or even uninteresting.
The performance from Nina Kerry, who plays Eevee, it is superb. She exudes a ton of compassion that’s mixed with exasperation and burnout. It’s impressive and enveloping when Eevee goes into some sort of zone out face. She’s not necessarily in a trance, but she certainly drifted off, which then creates her to be a bit of an unreliable narrator, but also one who gains a lot of sympathy just from her defeated expressions. And most importantly for this film, her voice is crisp and inviting, but not cold or DJ sounding like she’s putting on a radio voice for the podcast and sounds completely different all of the times. So, if you’ve ever met a DJ or even watch them in person while working and then compare them to outside of the radio booth, they typically are more toned down and create less of an edge to their voice. Now, point being though, although we hear both Eevee and Justin talk about getting into character for their podcast, there’s not a large noticeable shift in their stylings. Now, as a skeptic, Eevee is supposed to be the voice of reason, the one that Justin has to convince that something feels legit or is real. And despite her being a bit of an unreliable narrator, just thanks to some of the days that she starts to fall into, she’s also able to maintain the needed skepticism that creates just the right amount of doubt to make everything seem a little bit more plausible. Now, the whole audio presentation of this film, it is entrancing.
When Eevee will put on her headphones, we hear all of the ambient sound in the room just go immediately silent, creating this very lonely and isolated environment until she dials up Justin to record. or she happens to listen to some audio. When the exquisite sound design is then coupled with the patient filming style, the unsettling nature of the story takes hold and it just works to get under our skin. And I love it when a film will have the camera locked down on a subject, not panning or zooming, just simply remaining focused on one area as the character or item stays in a stationary spot. When this technique is combined with a horror story and there are all sorts of just shadowy areas inside the frame, I almost pop my eyes out of their sockets trying to strain to see any sort of clue or movement.
Most of the time it’s just tricks in my eyes that create something moving in the dark. But that doesn’t mean that there’s never nothing hiding in the shadows. The patience it takes to not put jump scares or creepy imagery in the background is huge, making it all the more effective and horrifying when there actually is something looming in the dark. The pacing for this is taught and efficient. While there’s a massive amount of restraint in the speediness, it’s not boring, nor does the story drag.
We’re on this inclining ramp that starts off rather tame and then begins to exponentially increase in dread and fear so that it appears as though we’re rocketing through the story, but in reality, it’s just the mounting stress that’s creating that illusion of speed. And when things start to go off the rails, they get harried and terrorizing, mixing discombobulating audio with quick and terrifying visuals that assault us in alternating and overlapping sequences so that at the climax, it’s just this sensory overload that doesn’t create confusion, but instead builds a great big nope. There’s one call that the hosts take towards the end of the story, and it is all kinds of terrible. We never see a thing, but thanks to descriptive storytelling earlier in the narrative, we know exactly what’s taking place on the other end of the line, and it is abominable. While there are many moments throughout the film that made me squirm a bit, this particular sequence shattered me, and it just made me feel the revulsion, rage, and horror that the audio is meant to evoke. there are several aesthetics within the presentation that remind me of two effectively scary films. One is the Taiwanese supernatural folk horror, Incantation. if you’ve not seen that, you are in for a terrifying treat. The other is the co era virtual supernatural horror host. Now, that one’s a quick 60-minute film that works amazingly well just to bring about the chills.
For Undertone, elements of those two movies are introduced in small ways, but they don’t feel like ripoffs or plagiarism. Instead, appearing more as influences to bring about a brand new story of fright. for me, the biggest shortcoming of the entire film, it’s the very end. As all hell breaks loose and the events go from gnarly to just bat crap, we lose all of the visuals. Now, I certainly appreciate and even understand that for a film centered around messed up audio, it’s fitting that the story solely uses audio as its finale, but because the movie is also a visual medium, it came across as a bit of a copout for not having to show or visualize the very end.
I think the audio is still not okay in the best way possible and it does work to force me to create my own interpretation of what the audio represents, but I still would have liked to have something other than a black screen to accompany the final minutes. As it stands though, Undertone accomplishes its goal for creating a forboding and threatening atmosphere using spectacular audio and sound design to build a world mainly out of sounds. Both the physical and voice acting of Nina Kiri and the voice work of all the other actors draw us in with welcoming or intriguing tones only to then scare us thanks to a mythos and storyline that are pure nightmare fuel. I don’t know if this is the scariest movie I’ve ever heard, but it is superbly executed and creates a lasting dread long after the credits are done. the audio is very explicit in the imagery that it conjures.
I give Undertone four and a half out of five couches. Despite preferring a different way to conclude the movie, on the whole, this was an exciting and distressing horror. I hope it freaks you out just as much as it did me. Okay, are there any supernatural horrors that have stuck with you long after you watched? Let me know what they were in the comments below.
