Undertone

Final Grrl Horror
No Spoilers Movie Review
Undertone (2026)

Undertone is the kind of movie I already know I need to watch again, but honestly, if I could redo the first watch, I would not do it in a theater unless I knew for a fact the room was going to stay dead quiet. I saw it last night, and because this movie is so built around sound, every person stomping in and out, messing with chairs, and acting like they were the only ones in the building completely messed with the experience. In some ways the theater is a great place for this because it puts you in the dark and forces your focus, but for this specific movie, I actually think the best possible way to watch it would be alone, in a dark room, with headphones on. Once it hits VOD, that is exactly how I want to rewatch it, because this is a movie that really needs your full attention.

Undertone follows Evy, a skeptical paranormal podcaster who is also caring for her dying mother while strange audio recordings begin pulling her into something increasingly unsettling. It was written and directed by Ian Tuason in his feature debut, stars Nina Kiri as Evy and Adam DiMarco as her podcast co-host Justin, and it opened in theaters this weekend. What really hangs over the whole movie though is grief and isolation, and I think that is part of why it works as well as it does. It is not just using sound to scare you. It is using silence, routine, repetition, and the feeling of being cut off from the rest of the world to put you in Evy’s head.

One thing I do want to say, and I am actually surprised I have not seen this brought up more, is that this movie probably should come with some kind of warning for people who are sensitive to themes involving dead children. I am not usually a trigger warning person either, but seeing this with someone who was really affected by that made me realize it is worth mentioning. There is not graphic gore here, and this is not a blood-soaked movie at all, but that theme is a major part of what is going on. The dying parent angle is also something I could see being hard for some people. That does not make the movie bad, not at all, but I do think it is worth knowing before you go in.

Style-wise, this is very much an A24 kind of horror movie. It is a slow burn, it is patient, and it is shot in a way that feels deliberate without trying too hard to scream “look how elevated I am.” The camera angles are interesting, the house itself becomes oppressive, and there are these off-focus or background scares that are easy to miss but genuinely creepy once you notice them. That kind of thing is right up my alley. It reminded me more of Paranormal Activity for most of the runtime, just in the way it builds dread through stillness, domestic space, and waiting for something to be wrong, but I can see why some people are comparing it to The Blair Witch Project as a kind of new-form horror experiment. The big thing that makes it stand apart is that it is so centered on sound.

Something else I really noticed is how incredible the movie is at creating isolation. You genuinely start to lose track of time with Evy, and I actually recommend paying attention to the clock while you watch because it adds to how strange and disorienting the whole thing feels. The movie gets a lot of mileage out of little details like that. She is in the same clothes for so much of it, and it quietly captures that grief-and-depression haze where time stops feeling normal and every day bleeds into the next. That part was honestly one of the creepiest things about it to me, because it makes you feel stuck in that house and in that mental space right along with her. It does a really good job of making you feel alone in the movie with her.

That part, for me, is what makes Undertone so interesting even when it is not the scariest movie of the year like a lot of people on review sites were hyping it up to be. I think that probably worked against it a bit, because if you go in expecting nonstop terror, that is not really what this movie is doing. Sound is usually what quietly does the heavy lifting in horror anyway. When a movie gets really quiet, when a floor creaks, when something is heard before it is seen, that is where the tension starts building whether people realize it or not. Undertone takes that idea and makes it the whole point. It is using one of our senses in a much more direct way than most horror movies do, and I think that alone makes it feel unique and kind of important, at least in the mainstream horror space. There are spooky visuals here too, but they are not the main event.

I thought the acting was solid overall. Nina Kiri carries a lot of this on her own, and that kind of role can fall apart fast if the lead does not hold your attention, but she did. Evy being more skeptical and almost weirdly amused through parts of this worked for me too. I actually liked that dynamic a lot, because you have one character leaning into conspiracy and belief while Evy is trying to hold onto science and logic. That clash gives the movie a nice tension outside of the supernatural stuff. Most of my issues were less about the acting and more the usual horror-movie thing where you are sitting there thinking, “I would absolutely not do that, but okay.” That is basically part of the genre’s furniture at this point.

Where I am more mixed is the ending. I do not want to spoil anything, but I kept waiting for it to hit just a little harder visually, and it never really did. I understand that the whole movie is built around sound and suggestion, and I do think some of that restraint is intentional, but I still found myself wanting one extra push at the end that never came. At the same time, I am not fully convinced the ending is as weak as people are saying. There was at least one subtle detail that seemed to connect the beginning and the end in a way the movie does not underline for you at all, and that makes me think there may be more going on here than people are catching on a first watch. So I came out a little frustrated, but also really wanting to revisit it, which is usually a sign a movie did something right even if it did not totally stick the landing for me.

Overall, I think Undertone is more unique than it is outright terrifying, and I mean that as a compliment. It is creepy, quiet, sneaky, and way more about tension than gore or shock. It is also the kind of movie that can absolutely be hurt by overhype, because if you go in expecting the most brutal or scariest movie of the year, that is probably not what this is. But if you go in ready for a slow, sound-driven horror movie that plays with grief, paranoia, and what you think you heard, I think there is a lot here to appreciate. Right now I am sitting at a 3.5 out of 5 ⭐️ but honestly, I could see that moving to a 4 on rewatch. This feels like one of those movies that might reveal more the second time around, and I kind of suspect that is exactly what it wants.