Weekend Mullings - undertone

I have a feeling the new horror movie undertone may become a victim of its own pre-release hype. Any time a horror movie gets hyped up as the "scariest movie in years," it's bound to disappoint people. But that doesn't mean the movie is bad, it just means its marketing is.

And OK yeah, I am sure there are some people who are utterly terrified by slow camera pans to the left that reveal...nothing. I am not. But I am impressed when seeing, or more accurately, hearing things I've never heard in a horror movie before, and undertone is ultimately an aural horror movie experience. (If you're going to see it in a theater, see it in a Dolby theater. And if you're going to watch it at home, wear headphones.)

Storywise it centers on Evy (Nina Kiri) the co-host of the paranormal podcast The Undertone, in which she is essentially the Scully to her co-host Justin's Mulder. (He's played by Adam DiMarco, but is never seen.) Justin lives in London, while Evy is living back in her childhood home in the States, caring for her dying mother (Michèle Duquet). That home (which is the director Ian Tuason's actual childhood home) is filled with Catholic art and knickknacks, which are creepy enough during normal hours, but take on an even creepier tone at 3am, the hour Evy records the podcast, to better align with her co-host's working hours.

The episode Evy and Justin are recording focuses on a series of recordings Justin received in which a man essentially starts recording his partner so they can try and figure out what she has been saying when she talks in her sleep. Of course, what he ends up recording is much more than that. 

If it sounds like this movie is essentially just watching a woman listen to spooky recordings, you wouldn't be wrong. What makes it hit or miss is if you find those recordings spooky and compelling yourself. I felt the film did an excellent job of building up extreme tension purely through the use of sound and visual suggestion. But a buildup without a satisfying payoff can be damned disappointing, and that's how I felt coming out of undertone; to put it bluntly, it whiffs its ending. Not bad enough to negate the entire film, but enough to suggest you tamper the expectations set up by the film's marketing,