Publication Date: 03-14-2026

Undertone (2026) review

Dir. Ian Tuason

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

Undertone is more-or-less a one-woman show of a movie, revolving around Evy (an outstanding Nina Kiri, The Handmaid’s Tale), a podcaster who moves back into her childhood home to care for her dying mother (Michèle Duquet), who lies in bed in a catatonic state. Evy’s break from washing her mother and changing her dressings is her podcast, which she does with her friend, Justin (Adam DiMarco, present only as a disembodied voice). Their show, “The Undertone Podcast,” concerns the paranormal and supernatural, with Justin being the believer and Evy providing the skepticism. They’ve done episodes on a video that forced people to kill themselves and another on one person’s fateful encounters with a Ouija Board.

Justin and Evy are prepared to tackle a listener-submitted email, which includes ten recordings of a married couple, who began documenting things they heard in their home. They make their way through a couple recordings an episode, trying to decipher what they’re hearing through audio editing and even backmasking. The deeper they dive into the recordings, the more Evy’s own mental health starts to decline.

Undertone is the feature debut of Ian Tuason, who shot the film in his parents’ home — not something you need to know going in, but a fact that crystalizes why this humble abode feels so lived-in. It’s fair to assume that all the religious iconography that lines the walls belong to Tuason’s parents. If you sit through the (very short) closing credits, you might be able to catch a moving dedication from the filmmaker to his parents, whose lives, and eventual passings, fueled the inspiration for this disturbing work:

“To Mom and Dad from March 2021 to October 2023, when their bodies and minds slowly surrendered to the world, to each other, and to Love itself, and in those thirty months, I learned everything I know now about peace, happiness, wisdom, service, courage and existence – truths I didn’t even know I was oblivious to in all my years before. So I simplify my dedication to Mom and Dad for transforming my faith into the knowledge of God.”

Tuason is so skillful and calculated with every aspect of Undertone that the film is still light on its feet remains impressive. Being that Evy is really the only human we see on-screen (not counting her comatose mother), we remain locked into her POV. Early on, she discovers she’s pregnant, which makes the audio files more harrowing as some of the later mp3s include baby noises and other sounds that suggest child murders. We get a very natural feel of the home as well, thanks to Tuason’s expert use of space and Graham Beasley’s choking cinematography, which can have the effect of feeling like he’s manipulating rooms as if to make them smaller. Canted angles, oscillating cameras, and a phenomenal use of negative space are all part of this rich cinematic soufflé. Being that a significant chunk of the film is devoted to Evy sitting at her dining room table doing her podcast, Tuason livens up these shots by rewarding our naturally wandering eyes. Was that a shadow? Did something in the cabinet move? Probably not. Like Evy, we’re likely just getting too consumed in what we’re hearing that we are imaging things. So we think.

Sound design has become something of an underappreciated art, and it’s one of the best elements of Undertone. Tuason and company want you to feel what’s happening as opposed to see it: the clicks of a keyboard, shrill feedback noises, hidden messages layered into music, indistinguishable noises on the aforementioned recordings, etc. This isn’t a movie comprised of sudden booms and thuds. Horror devotees are conditioned to respond to brief stretches of silence with a certain unease given that a “jump-scare,” or a sudden jarring noise, is about to occur. Tuason doesn’t opt for such cheap thrills. Instead, he manipulates us by stretching out that silence or prolonged sense of anticipation, which I’ll admit heightened my own attentiveness. It also left me tense and exhausted in a way few horror films do. I would go as far as to say the last time I felt such palpable anxiety when watching a movie was Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs.

With so much of Undertone assuming a slowburn pace, the final act is made all the more electric and disturbing, as Tuason traps us in a particularly chaotic and messy episode of “The Undertone Podcast” in which Evy’s world begins collapsing. It’s during this conclusion that the sound design explodes with truly visceral and disturbing noises that suggest things that even the most daring horror filmmakers don’t like touching. The film does keep with its genre’s tradition with an opaque ending that still leaves us with questions. It’s moderately irksome, yes, but such a play keeps the film consistent with its approach from the jump, which is to avoid exposition jumps and double-down on atmosphere and tone.

Following its July 2025 premiere at Fantasia, A24 snatched up Undertone in a seven-figure deal, while Blumhouse convinced Tuason to be the one to help the studio reboot the Paranormal Activity franchise. Talk about a heavy lift. I was hoping he would get at least one more crack at an original story of his own before making the leap to a sequel or an existing series. That said, if Paranormal Activity is going to be brought back from the dead and be something worth seeing, it’s going to take someone with a vision. Tuason offers enough promise and demonstrable craftsmanship with his debut to suggest that he’s a cut above some of his contemporaries who boast even larger resumes.

Starring: Nina Kiri, Michèle Duquet, Voiced by: Adam DiMarco, Jeff Yung, and Keana Lyn Bastidas. Directed by: Ian Tuason.