Paranormal podcast triggers a hellzapoppin’ dive into deep-dish delirium
undertone
Starring Nina Kiri & Michèle Duquet
Directed by Ian Tuason
Rated R
In theaters Friday, March 13
For decades, horror movies have fright-fueled our fears of technology run amok, with haunted TVs and videotapes, and supernatural spins on telephone calls, toys, artificial intelligence and the internet. This stylishly terrifying tale adds a new link in the chain of hi-tech horrors with an after-hours podcast that becomes a portal for unspeakable evil to flourish.
Nina Kiri (she played Alma in The Handmaid’s Tale) gives a bravo solo performance as Evy, a podcaster who has moved back home to take care of her dying, barely breathing mother (Michèle Duquet).When Evy and her co-host partner (a heard-but-never-seen Adam DeMarco) dive into some audio files a couple has anonymously sent them for their 3 a.m. paranormal podcast, strange and unsettling things start to happen.
The movie’s title (also the name of the podcast) is intentionally lowercase, suggesting something underneath and unheard, lurking below and hidden.
In a most impressive debut, director Ian Tuason weaves a masterful minimalist tapestry of creeping dread and doom, using only two characters onscreen and never going outside the rooms of their house. As befitting a movie built around a spooky podcast, the sound is a major component of the mounting terror. We hear what Evy hears, through her headphones or inside the house, forcing us to use our imagination about what might be going on.
There are screams, crying, bangs and thumps in the night, whooshes and other weirdness. The whistle of a teakettle, the tortured tick of the hands of a clock, and the alarmed ring of the telephone are potently chilling. Tuason meshes religious iconography (an open Bible, a painting of The Last Supper, a subplot about prayer) with ancient demonology, murderous moms and infanticide, and the suggestion that children’s nursery rhymes are backward-masked with horrific hidden-message wickedness.
And Evy announces at one point that she’s pregnant.
As she spirals into madness, the movie builds toward a lights-out climax that…well, you’ll have to use your ears to fill in what your eyes can’t see. But in this case, hearing is certainly horrifying enough.
undertone dares you to come along for its hellzapoppin’ dive into deep-dish delirium, a place of demons and death rattles, with a guarantee that you’ll never hear “London Bridge” or “Baa Baa Black Sheep” the same way again.
—Neil Pond
The Media Tourist 