A paranormal podcast goes wrong when family is involved in Undertone
Podcasts are still hot, especially mystery and supernatural, and Director Ian Tuason and A24 are aiming to capitalize on that fever with a film that puts the genre square at the center of the enigma.
The film, about a woman named Evangeline (Evy) who lives alone with her dying mother, is technically a story about how we deal with the passing of a loved one, and what that weight does to us, but throws in some of the potential evils that families will take on to keep each other close. It emphasizes that closeness by keeping us in one location for the entire film, focusing on Evy’s enormous task of and inability to balance her mom’s impending death with her own life. I can relate to the dynamic between Evy and her mom, as many of us have sadly gone through medical situations with family, and there’s definite connections I make with her as she’s going through IT.
That’s all somewhat visualized through her podcast calls with a friend as they investigate frightening stories. It’s an interesting one woman show concept, as we only ever see Evy on the screen, with lighting and shadow and color all concentrated on her in the shots. When she’s around the home we feel her loneliness, watching her mother breathing heavily in bed. The moment she puts on her headphones, though, she’s in her safe space, hearing the voices of others, interacting. It really puts the emphasis on her and yet gives us an interesting method of depicting loneliness.
It all comes crashing down though when the proverbial shit hits the fan as a listener sends in a strange message that Evy and her cohost try to tackle. It’s a message that hits far too close to home, prompting her to start experiencing strange things around her house, with her mother and with the show itself.
The movie is built on forced tension, and it REALLY tries to keep that up relentlessly, but by relying so heavily on it the film drops the ball on the plot that we’re presented with. It has a lot of tension scares, moments in which we THINK we see something, or are waiting for something. There are a lot of panning shots, a lot of slow head turns as Evy thinks she sees something, a lot of shadow darkening. But there’s just so many of them, and very rarely do they actually lead to anything terrifying, that by the end we’re hoping SOMETHING will happen. When we do get that final culmination of events it all happens almost too quickly, like shaking a bottle of soda over and over, slowly turning the cap, hearing the hissing, but then when we do pop off the top it just only barely fizzes.
While Undertone starts off strong, with a cool premise, some early double takes and a great singular performance, it loses its creativity midway through and ends up becoming rather predictable. Like a flat soda, the film just waits a little too long to capitalize on what it’s building up to.
RATING: 2/5
DISAPPOINTING
This review is based on a screener sent to the Editor by the distributor.
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