Horror movies have undergone a lot of change. The 80s era of cheesy gore fests ran the box office, showcasing brutal mutilations and metamorphosing bodies into strange, slimy puppets (e.g., The Fly). And after people got sick of seeing viscera splattered gratuitously on screen, the 90s took a more cerebral approach to the sub-genre. Take the most critically acclaimed film of that era, The Silence of the Lambs, as a prime example of said changing attitude. And now, we have something in the middle that many call “elevated horror.” Undertone is another attempt at this genre, though it often fails more than it scares.
Undertone, the debut feature by director Ian Tuason, is also a film indicative of a tried-and-true fad I keep seeing in the horror genre: a shift from style to substance. And even though the “rule of cool” may work for some, I often find myself on the other side of the fence.
The general plot is this: A host of a true crime podcast receives creepy voicemails from an anonymous source that attracts her curiosity, all while she stays at her dying mother’s house to care for her. While the idea sounds ripe for a subversive kind of horror movie, the film ultimately underutilizes the premise.
The bad
The film starts strong by introducing us to Evy, the main character, and the admittedly unsettling house she and her mother reside in, but it soon falls into a cycle that quickly grows stale. She and her faceless podcast host listen to one of ten emails sent to them, then she checks on her comatose mother, where something spooky happens, and finally, she walks around the house at a snail’s pace with a scared expression. Repeat ad nauseam, and that’s basically the pacing for the rest of the runtime.
The film’s commitment to staying at the house the whole time also doesn’t help the pacing. Although it was Tuason’s own childhood home, which gives the film another creepy aspect, it also never ventures past three rooms for the entire runtime. Even when another character invites her to a party, the film simply cuts from her leaving the house to her return the next day. That part was particularly frustrating, as we find out she was six weeks pregnant with the person who invited her. But instead of getting some character development on that end while also taking a breather from the house, we get nothing.
On that note, the running theme of nursery rhymes having dark meanings under their poppy exterior was almost laughable. The film tries to make “London Bridge is Falling Down” scary by spending way too much time playing it backward to find a “secret message.” It’s an odd plot point that has her playing nursery rhymes backward, which barely works atmospherically and visually has us watching someone play around with audio software for long stretches of time.
The good
But even though that particular aspect of the film is often its weakest link, it does also highlight the film’s best trait, which is its sound design. Given that the premise concerns podcasting, it makes sense. Watching this in a theater made me really admire the effort that went into the sound editing, as those parts were the only times I felt truly scared.
It’s also clear that the sound design was always the source of that fear factor in the film, and it didn’t resort to using cliché jump scares to emphasize that. While there were some, especially near the third act, it wasn’t as gratuitous as it could’ve been. The moments when the sound took center stage in creating a dreadful mood were honestly the best parts of the film. I just wish it could’ve been paired with a bit more of an interesting visual.
The main actress also did the best she could with a script that requires her to mostly look scared while walking around a house à la Ebenezer Scrooge. She could be annoying at times, mainly because of her rude disposition toward her fellow host in favor of the podcast. But still, she had some great moments that really sold the terrifying nature of the demon in her house, even if they were sparse.
So why doesn’t it work?
As I said before, the “elevated horror” genre is one that has been taking inspiration from both the arthouse genre and the aforementioned qualities of the previous decades. With these attributes, it has helped to stand out among others in the horror genre and has also presented itself as an unconventional kind of horror movie. And while some releases under this title have produced some of the best horror movies ever, I think it’s starting to get stale. And in retrospect, one film might’ve been the canary in a coal mine for this genre.
Skinamarink, a film that came out in 2023, is a film that is all style over substance. And it seems like every year since its release, we get a movie like this. Low budget, atmospherically unsettling, but ultimately disappointing. Undertone, I believe, is A24’s attempt at this.
Skinamarink was shot on a shoestring budget and made a really good return on investment, like another certain horror movie, The Blair Witch Project (1999). But unlike that film, it uses a similar low-fi aesthetic to bore the audience to death instead of scaring them. But because of how much money it made, it inspired a bunch of studios to create their own Skinamarink in the hopes that they’ll have their own high-yield production.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not gonna get scared of scenes of a bedroom in low light or seeing someone play with a .WAV file while looking scared. While Undertone wasn’t the film I thought it would be, I hope that there’s another release that could revitalize this growingly tiresome trend.
