Going light on spoilers, a look at the multi-strand storytelling of 2026’s Undertone, and how it’s as integral to its horror as its sound design.
A story doesn’t necessarily have to be original to be effective; it just needs a fresh angle. Released earlier this year, writer-director Ian Tuason’s Undertone was rightly marketed by A24 on its use of sound – the unsettling silences, scratchy recordings and jolts of static that hint at horrors occurring outside the frame.
Aural design aside, the element that also makes Undertone so effective is its use of nested stories. Through protagonist Evy (Nina Kiri), we’re actually presented with three narratives, all neatly intertwined; all could have made a conventional horror yarn by themeselves, but together, they create an experience that is greater than the sum of its individual parts.
These stories are:
Evy and her mother
This is the hub around which the other stories are spun. We meet Evy, a young woman left to provide end-of-life care for her comatose mother; the camera never leaves the house, and aside from actor Michèle Duquet, lying on the bed as the stricken parent, we only hear the other film’s other characters.
There are constant reminders of the mother’s devout Christianity; but overwhelmingly, the mood is one of intense loneliness. Evy’s care for her mother leaves her isolated and increasingly drained; only rarely venturing out to socialise, her main outlet is The Undertone – a podcast about the supernatural she runs with her co-host, Justin (Adam DiMarco).
Another character we see but don’t hear, their relationship forms Undertone’s second story – again, intertwined with the first, but with its own dynamics and themes.
Evy and Justin
The Undertone podcast allows Evy to adopt a role that is, in essence, a heightened version of herself: smart, methodical and clear-eyed. It’s a familiar enough thing to anyone who has some kind of online or social media presence: Evy and Justin talk one in one register when they’re interacting casually over the internet – commiserating over Evy’s sick mother and so forth – and in another when they’re recording their podcast.
We see and hear them subtly adapt to their chosen personas: Evy the skeptic, Justin the believer in ghosts and the unexplained. Even later in the film, as Evy’s nerves begin to fray, we observe her taking a deep breath and becoming the version of herself she puts up for public consumption.
The theme of this part of the story is the gradual breaking down of that persona, and Evy’s reluctant shift from skeptic – note how she fearlessly puts on a supposedly cursed video clip – to a believer in the paranormal.
Driving these two narratives is a third, which unfolds on a set of ten sound recordings sent to Justin via an anonymous emailer. As part of their usual podcast, Evy and Justin agree to listen to the recordings with their listeners to see what they might contain.
Mike and Abby
The clips sound mundane enough at first. We hear the voice of a chap named Mike (Jeff Yung) who insists that his partner Jessa (Keana Lyn Bastidas) talks in her sleep. Jessa refuses to believe it, and so Mike starts recording through the night in the hope of capturing the proof. Soon, Mike gets the evidence he needs – except it turns out that there’s something far darker to Jessa’s nocturnal ramblings than initially meets the ear.
We won’t delve further into this particular plot strand, since it’s the key to what happens elsewhere in the film.
Twisted tale
Again, it’s possible to imagine a horror writer devoting an entire story to Mike and Jessa’s predicament – a Paranormal Activity-esque yarn about a young couple who gradually realise that they’re in the presence of something ancient and demonic.
Similarly, Undertone could simply have been a film about two podcasters investigating some strange recordings, or some other curse (the Ring-like clip that is said to kill those who watch it, say).
Other films have focused exclusively on podcasts from hell to satisfying effect; director Matt Vesely’s 2022 sci-fi thriller Monolith was also about an isolated, female podcaster (played by Lily Sullivan) who dives a little too deeply into a chosen mystery, this one involving strange, brick-like objects of unknown origin.
But by weaving in the offline story of Evy’s relationship with her dying mother, as well as the unseen plight of Mike and Jessa, Tuason constantly complicates and deepens what could have been a by-the-numbers chiller.
As Evy occasionally looks over her shoulder at the dark shadows behind her recording space, or we catch the faint shimmers of a figure or a light switching on in another room, we’re left to wonder how and when each of these story threads will impact the other.
The house, with its religious objects and old photos, represents Evy’s roots, and the Christianity she’s been raised on but now keeps at arm’s length; the online realm of the podcast, where she gets to play the Scully to Justin’s Mulder, is the version of herself Evy would prefer to be. The recordings could be interpreted as all the negativity, fear and anger the protagonist has been trying to ignore – but like all repressed things, they have to find their voice eventually.
Tuason has said in interviews that the idea for Undertone came to him while he was taking care of his terminally ill parents during the pandemic; the house in which the film was shot is his own childhood home in Canada. It’s this personal connection, perhaps, that gives the film its charge: just as people aren’t just one thing – we’re never just carers, or workers or parents or sons or daughters – so a story has to have layers and depth.
Taken on their own, Undertone’s themes of isolation, grief and religion are familiar enough – as are its assorted spooks and curses. But put them all together, and you have a powerful mix that cuts through as loudly as its much-vaunted sound design.
Undertone is out on DVD and Blu-ray from the 26th October.
