요약
Undertone in wide release in theaters The post Review: Undertone appeared first on Chicago Reader.
본문
What’s scariest in Undertone is what isn’t there. Filmmaker Ian Tuason crafts tension around what we can’t see, and, even more dexterously, in what we can’t hear. What lurks in the dark corners beyond the camera’s close-ups of rising star Nina Kiri? What unfolds elsewhere in the house when she puts on her noise-canceling headphones? Paranoia breeds in these unknowns, in the negative spaces where our fears cast their own forms.
The silence is largely self-imposed: Evy (Kiri) crowns herself with headphones each night to record the titular paranormal podcast. She spends her days caring for her ailing mother, whose creaky house is classically adorned with unsettling Catholic imagery. Viewers quickly get the sense that her relationship with her mother—and with God—is turbulent, to say the least. This is made glaringly obvious after Evy discovers she’s pregnant with her deadbeat boyfriend’s baby.
Evy’s headphones provide a reprieve from her life, where the only sounds come from her voice and that of her remote cohost, Justin (voiced by Adam DiMarco). For the show, they play opposites: Justin, the steadfast believer, and Evy, the quippy skeptic. Undertone is anchored by a single episode in which the two podcasters banter over ten audio files, labeled “atonement,” anonymously sent to them via email.
These recordings document a man witnessing a demon gradually possess his girlfriend. As a close listener, Justin deduces that the demon is Abyzou, known for a violent envy of fertility. The voice notes run the gamut: eerie thumping noises, nonsensical sleep talk, crying babies, and haunting melodies. Even the most weathered ghost hunter would need thick skin to analyze them, so as the podcasters trudge through the MP3 files, Evy breaks from her skeptical facade into a dreadful panic shaped by fears about her mother’s health and the resurfacing weight of Catholic guilt. Even when the writing veers into some reductive territory, Undertone uses modern technology to deftly link demonic folklore with the anxieties of life in truly memorable ways.
Undertone plugs into a playlist of timeworn horror tropes—ghostly figures just out of focus, demonic folklore embedded into children’s songs, Catholicism at large, a The Ring-esque video, and even a creepy talking baby doll—yet Tuason undeniably strikes new chords. The director’s attention to negative space toys with the audience, quickening heartbeats and forcing viewers to fear what might arrive next. And the masterful sound design alone—mirroring the sensations of her headphones—traps the audience within Evy’s paranoiac mania.
As Undertone crescendoed through its final act, I found myself pleading for Evy to thrust off her headphones. But Tuason’s successfully nerve-racking film relentlessly suffocates within its inescapable, eerie soundscape. R, 93 min.
Reader Recommends: FILM & TV
Our critics review the best on the big and small screens and in the media.
