With the release of Undertone, the horror genre is forever changed.
Undertone is about a woman who runs a podcast in her home, which is also occupied by her sick mother. The podcast, after getting popular among listeners across platforms, received an email of 10 audio files containing ominous and distressing content. Throughout the movie, demonic presences involved in the audio files become more and more apparent in real life, and the hosts of the podcast become intertwined with the horrific demon’s antics.
The movie centers on child-based horror themes— child sacrifice, demons, and lullabies turned twisted. These topics have often been explored in the horror genre for decades, but never the way that Undertone has.
Undertone is an audio-focused horror film that, instead of scaring audiences with typical jump scares, body horror, or gore, targets your ears and can make for one of the most paralyzingly unsettling experiences one can go through in a theater. The screams erupting from the audio files bounce off your skin and pull goosebumps up to the surface. Everything about the movie’s audio-based tactic is so detailed and well-thought-out that it doesn’t fail to give the viewer immense discomfort.
Although horror films always have chilling audio— like what sounds like footsteps in an empty house, or whispers of voices in a forest— they never have this much of an effort to receive a fearful reaction from solely sound.
Opening night was something special. The theater was packed and ready to be scared stiff. My cousin, with whom I was seeing the movie, almost jumped out of his seat when I warned him that the slogan was “The scariest movie you will ever hear.” He hollered about how sound is his weakness and how he didn’t know if he could handle it.
Admittedly, I was one of the few who felt a bit underwhelmed by the movie’s fear factor. I found it to be a bit cheesy; it was like, hmm, if you reverse a lullaby, it’ll reveal a scary message! No way! So, not necessarily anything that a regular, cash-grab slop horror movie wouldn’t have.
However, the lower-quality horror didn’t make the movie’s intention any less honorable. I think, as a society, we’re all sick of the same premises being carbon-copied onto every new movie; each one being more and more unoriginal. Especially with horror movies, we can only watch the same slasher or supernatural tropes so many times. Undertone found a horror trope and transformed the idea into something that no movie has ever strived to do– a one-room, one-character, podcast-centered, supernatural story, and attempted it. It’s actually something new. And hey, maybe the horror just wasn’t my cup o’ tea. Maybe I’m too picky or too desensitized.
And although the ideas explored in the movie were undoubtedly unoriginal, they were portrayed in such an original way. Because regardless of how scary Undertone may or may not be, it’s something new creatively. I’d look forward to horror movies following the path that Undertone has paved: finding a new way to pull fear from audiences everywhere.
