Fantasia 2025 Review: THE UNDERTONE, Scary to Watch, Terrifying to Listen to

Evy is back at her mother’s home, watching over her as she lies on her deathbed, her passing inevitable. When she is not caring for her mom, Evy hosts The Undertone, a paranormal podcast she co-hosts with her friend Justin. She balances out the duo with her skepticism against his more impartial views. Every couple of nights, Evy tunes in remotely from the kitchen in the house and the pair explores “all things creepy,” which helps her concentrate on something other than her mother’s passing.

 

Justin receives an email with ten audio files from an anonymous sender, and the duo begins to play them on air. From the recordings, they learn about Mike, his partner Jessa, and their nightly bedtime ritual. Mike made the recordings because Jessa began to talk in her sleep. He recorded her to play them back to her the following day. However, each recording becomes increasingly disturbing, and scarier events begin to unfold in them. Not only in the clips but in Evy’s mother’s home. 

 

Justin starts to make disturbing connections with nursery rhymes and hears weird sounds within the audio. For Evy, in the loneliness of her mother's home, the dark corners become even darker. Strange occurrences begin to chip away at her psyche, and this house begins to feel less and less like home. It becomes a psychological and emotional prison, from which Evy may not escape until she makes her final admission. 

 

Ian Tuason, author and short film director, makes their directorial debut with the horror thriller, The Undertone. Born out of their own experience of caregiving for their parents as they passed on during and after the pandemic, you understand that this is a very personal film for the writer/director. 

 

The direction is controlled and patient, with long, slow pans across rooms, inching towards what may or may not be the next scary thing. As the camera passes by Evy she peers over her shoulder, coming along with us into the darker corners of the home. It is an expression of control over the camera and what we see while the events unfolding in front of it slowly spiral out of it. 

 

The tricks and bits that Tuason uses to elicit horror thrills from the audience are understated. They have not gone for over-the-top scares and stunts, instead doing just enough to draw gasps and squeals from the audience around us. The constants like shadows in doors, reflections, figures rising in the background; they are never anything that Evy sees with her own eyes, but they are there to build fear in the viewer, fear for Evy.

 

We may not have found The Undertone scary by definition, but it became more and more unsettling as the story progressed. It is building towards something, something that Evy has to come to terms with. As it builds towards the end we too, personally, we reminded that we are of that vintage where our own parents are of ‘that age’, where those chapters could close at any time.

 

As a child of the Satanic Panic era, there is a, we don't know what to call it, a sincere relatability to Justin's dive into the audio files. As he and Evy listen for hidden messages in the background of the files, or in the backmasking (such a Satanic Panic term), we found ourselves smiling during these moments. That may have gone against what Tuason was trying to pry out of his audience, but this is how we connected to those moments. 

 

Of all the films that have depended on audio-instigated thrills and chills, The Undertone may be the best to have ever done it now. The sound design alone in this film is worth the price of admission. Flawless in execution and detail, right now, The Undertone is one of the best horror thrillers you will ever listen to. 

 

While everyone else tells you to cover your eyes, Tuason is telling you to cover your ears.