Undertone 4K 2025 Ultra HD 2160p

We watched this very intriguing movie 10 days ago, right before bed, with headphones on and in complete darkness. At the time, it seemed like just a simple horror flick—we watched it and eventually forgot about it. But no. By the end of April, we hadn’t forgotten it—the aftertaste and lingering impact were still with us. And if, after watching it, you feel like criticizing the plot, you’d better familiarize yourself with the story behind the film’s creation. Ian Tuason really had to battle his own demons. He began his film career by creating immersive 360-degree horror shorts for YouTube, including “Three AM,” which went viral in 2015, and was actually working on a screenplay about paranormal enthusiasts investigating the phenomenon of songs played backward when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.

Six years ago, the beloved parents of Ian Tuason, a Filipino-Canadian, were diagnosed with terminal cancer, so the screenwriter and director returned to the home in the suburbs of Toronto where he grew up to care for them. There, he grappled with the fear, guilt, and emotional strain associated with this experience and channeled his daily life into the screenplay for the film *Undertone*.

But he had to face the bad news and return to his parents’ home. At first, the A24 project might seem a bit dull and slow-paced to everyone. That’s normal. If you want to build tension, distract the audience with conversations, mundane daily routines, and podcasts at first, so you can then smoothly lead up to the climax. Ian Tuason chose a very compelling setup for his heroine. She stays home all the time, skillfully caring for her ailing mother, unable to sleep due to stress, and that’s how she runs her little show with a partner who is never shown on screen. For most of the runtime, the protagonist is sitting down, which is also a plus—no need to wait for running scenes, screams, or shaky camerawork. Although the film doesn’t scare viewers with aliens, the dead, or stalkers, *Undertone* holds its own and emphasizes what’s terrifying to hear in the silence.

His mother died suddenly, and his father two years later. “I was just describing my life and what I had to struggle with. You’re practically constantly in a state of fear: Have they already left? What will it be like when they’re gone? But there are other emotions I hadn’t thought about before, like guilt. You start to wonder if you could have done things differently...”

The phrase “The scariest movie you’ve ever heard” was certainly an exaggeration—marketing is marketing, after all. Still, it was truly fascinating to follow the two podcast hosts as they took turns listening to each of the ten recordings. This is exactly where your imagination needs to kick in to vividly picture the eerie scenes from the audio clips. The anonymous couple, to put it mildly, is under constant stress due to a rather delicate situation. Meanwhile, the guy behind the microphone (Adam DiMarco from the hit series “I Have a Very Bad Feeling”) is quite impressionable and actively believes what he hears, while his partner (Nina Kiry, definitely not Joe’s sister) is quite the skeptic—as if her problems with her mother and her personal life weren’t enough, now she has to start worrying for no reason at all.

“It’s better. It’s so stressful that you want to walk away. But then you feel guilty for wanting to walk away.” “Over the course of a year working on the script, I sort of pulled myself together a bit,” he says. But when Tuason decided to shoot *Undertone* in his childhood home and filming began, “all those emotions came flooding back. I started drinking again. I couldn’t help myself. I thought, ‘I need a drink’”.

Almost until the very end of the film, Ian Tuason spares the audience typical “screamers,” “jump scares,” and other silly borrowed terms, emphasizing the homey atmosphere with subdued lighting and complete silence outside the headphones. Clearly, the scariest thing is probably the blurring of the line between reality—which raises doubts—and a nightmare that keeps recurring and seems like it will never end. It seems like anyone who goes to see *Undertone* in a movie theater will be incredibly lucky. For some reason, this intriguing film isn’t in the lineup at theaters in our town. Don’t think about it for too long—just immerse yourself in audiovisual ecstasy in a dark theater with excellent equipment. Serbian actress Nina Kiridžija (Kiri) is quite pretty, so we’d love to see her in more horror projects. There isn’t quite enough of Mikey Monroe.