UNDERTONE Review

What happens when a horror film knows exactly how to get under your skin… but maybe doesn’t fully know what to do once it’s there?

That was kind of my experience with Undertone, the new A24 horror-thriller directed by Ian Tuason and starring Nina Kiri and Adam DiMarco. This is a movie with atmosphere for days. Genuine dread. Real unease. The kind of film that can make you stare into the darkest corner of your room a little longer than usual after the credits roll.

And for a good chunk of its runtime, I was very much on its wavelength. The setup here is simple and effective. We follow Evie, the host of a popular paranormal-themed podcast, who begins receiving these terrifying recordings that slowly start to blur the line between creepy content and an actual haunting. So right away, the movie has a strong hook. Podcasting, audio horror, isolation, grief, sleep deprivation, paranoia — there is a lot here that should work. And honestly, for a while, it really does.

The biggest strength of Undertone is the technical craft. This movie creates an immersive sense of dread almost from the jump, and it rarely lets that mood go. The atmosphere is heavy. Somber. Quiet in a way that feels threatening. You are constantly waiting for something to emerge from the frame, and that tension becomes the film’s real engine.

And the visual language here is really smart. The use of negative space is excellent. Tuason and his team lean hard into these wide shots with faint light, deep shadows, and just enough visual information to make your eyes start playing tricks on you. And I mean YOUR eyes, not just Evie’s. That’s the trick this movie pulls better than almost anything else. It invites the audience into the paranoia. You start scanning the corners of the frame looking for movement, looking for a figure, looking for something that may or may not even be there. Then the movie will suddenly cut. Maybe to a close-up of Evie’s face. Maybe to a wall clock. Maybe to a computer screen. And it cuts so quickly that you almost question whether you saw something in that previous wider shot. It never lingers long enough for you to confirm it. So now the movie has you second-guessing yourself. That is good horror filmmaking. Old-school in some ways. Very controlled. Very confident.

And then there’s the sound.

I am dead serious when I say the sound design and sound mixing in this film are the MVPs. Flat-out phenomenal. This is one of those horror movies where the sound is doing just as much work as the camera, maybe more. Tiny audio details, the manipulation of silence, the layering of the recordings themselves — it all creates this unnerving texture that stays with you.

I’m not even joking when I say the sound mixing here is borderline Oscar-worthy. That may sound crazy for a movie like this, but if you watch Undertone with headphones or in a dark room with the volume up, you’ll know exactly what I mean. The sound doesn’t just support the fear. It is the fear.

Performance-wise, this is basically a one-woman show, and Nina Kiri really carries it. I wasn’t familiar with her going in, but she does a terrific job here. This movie asks a lot of her because she is doing most of the heavy lifting emotionally, physically, and psychologically. The film spends so much time locked in with Evie that if that performance doesn’t work, the whole thing collapses. Kiri keeps it grounded. She gives the movie a human center even when the story itself starts drifting into murkier territory.

Adam DiMarco is here as Justin, her friend and podcast partner, but he’s mostly limited to voice work. We never really see him on screen, so this is very much Evie’s film. And to Kiri’s credit, she keeps you invested even when the screenplay starts showing its seams. Because here’s where Undertone lost me a bit.

I kind of hate using this critique because sometimes it feels lazy, but in this case I really mean it: if this had been a 30-minute short film, or maybe a segment in an anthology, I think it could have been absolutely devastating. Core-shaking. The kind of horror short people talk about for years. But stretched to 90 minutes, some of its best ideas start to wear out their welcome. That’s the real issue. The aesthetics are strong. The atmosphere is strong. The sound is incredible. The framing is sharp. But once the movie makes its point a few times, you start to get the gist. The creepiest elements become more expected than surprising. And horror like this really depends on that sense of uncertainty. Once the rhythm becomes familiar, some of the power starts to fade.

That doesn’t mean the movie becomes bad. It doesn’t. I was still engaged for most of it. But I could definitely feel the repetition settling in, especially through that middle stretch. It’s one of those cases where what the film does well is so effective at first that you wish it either evolved more aggressively or got out a little sooner.

There is also a deeper emotional and thematic layer running through the film involving loss, regret, faith, and family. And I do appreciate that Undertone is trying to be about something beyond just jump scares and spooky recordings. There is meaning in there. There’s a genuine sadness hovering over the whole thing.

My issue is that I’m not sure any one of those themes gets fully fleshed out in a satisfying way. They’re present. They matter. You can feel the movie reaching for them. But they stay a little underdeveloped, and that becomes more noticeable once the story starts asking you to invest in the bigger explanation behind everything.

And for me, that brings us to the weakest part of the film: the final act.

The last act just didn’t work for me. That is ultimately what dragged my score down, because I really did appreciate the first two-thirds of this movie, even with some of the redundancy. But once the film starts tying in this religious angle, while also bringing in folklore from hundreds of years ago to explain the supernatural elements, it got shakier for me.

No spoilers, obviously. But I’ll put it this way: I would have preferred those plot devices be introduced much earlier, or maybe not explained so cleanly at all. There are several mentions throughout the movie that Evie is not sleeping. We get nightmare sequences. We see clear signs that she is unraveling. She is fraying mentally and emotionally. And because the film already builds that instability so well, I actually think leaving more of the haunting open to interpretation would have been the better route.

That ambiguity was the movie’s secret weapon. The moment it starts trying to connect everything with a more detailed backstory in the last 20 minutes, it loses some of that eerie power. It starts feeling rushed. A little convoluted. And honestly, it takes away from the minimalistic setup that was working just fine on its own. This film did not need a bunch of extra bells and whistles. It already had the goods. It had the dread. It had the soundscape. It had the shadows. It had a lead performance strong enough to hold the whole thing together. Sometimes less really is more in horror. And Undertone is at its best when it trusts that.

So overall, this is a creepy, technically impressive horror film with some truly brilliant craft behind it. The use of shadows, dim lighting, smart framing, and especially that haunting sound design make it worth seeing for genre fans. Nina Kiri is excellent and absolutely keeps the film above water. Without her, I think this thing sinks fast.

But in the end, I wish Undertone had either committed more fully to its intricate premise from the beginning or stayed lean and mysterious all the way through. Instead, it saves too much explanation for too late, and that backstory undercuts some of the very tension the movie worked so hard to build.

This one is a slight recommend. Especially if you’re somebody who loves ghost stories, demonic horror, or slow-burn paranoia pieces that rely more on atmosphere than outright carnage. And seriously — if you do watch this one, watch it in the dark, throw on some headphones, and let the sound do its job.

If you dare.

🍿 SCORE = 61 / 100