Dead air: "undertone"

21st century horror cinema has in certain respects been a history of terrifying technologies. It began with a new wave of video nasties (the various iterations of the Ring series), before going digital, scrolling through and past dodgy websites (feardotcom), spooky surveillance footage (the many Paranormal Activitys) and killer apps (Friend Request, Countdown) to arrive - come the pandemic - at cursed Zoom calls (Host). It's almost as though the movies have been trying to warn us about something. Now there's Ian Tuason's much-trumpeted A24 buy-in undertone, which centres on a haunted Irish singer who's become a spokesperson for the UK's rivers... no, sorry, it's podcasts, as everything else is nowadays. Some cursory preamble establishes the circumstances of an especially fateful recording session for an apparently popular paranormal pod. Sceptical host Evy (Nina Kiri) is dialling in from the US, and the home she shares with her ailing mother (Michèle Duquet). Her more suggestible co-host Justin (Adam DiMarco), dialling in from London, has a new mystery for the pair to investigate: an anonymously submitted email containing ten attached audio files, made up of what appear to be the conversations of a fraught couple, heavily doctored children's nursery rhymes, earsplitting shrieks and screams, and what even Evy starts to believe are hidden messages. It's a radio play, essentially, one that's taken a wrong turn and ended up in the Cineworld by mistake.

It is, also, a demonstration of horror cinema's recent sound design tendency run amok. One element of undertone has been prioritised above all others: the ears are duly piqued, battered and traumatised, but the eye grows bored and sleepy, and the entire lower half of the body grows terribly restless. My heart sank the minute it became apparent Tuason's main visual focus was going to be a woman sat alone at her own dining table clicking links on her laptop; for much of the movie, we're either eavesdropping on a production meeting or listening to a podcast that is the paranormal equivalent of a local radio station's misheard lyrics phone-in. The hosts incessantly tell one another they've heard something they haven't (and, more crucially, that we haven't), while Tuason cuts to a clock on the wall that, I swear, starts to go backwards beyond a certain point ("but we've still got two more files to listen to!"). So bare-bones you could play its ribcage like a xylophone, undertone is reflective of a wider trend, but it's a lamentable trend: filming people recording podcasts, thinking that'll do as either television or online content, rather than spending money on actual entertainment. Pivoting to video has sure worked out well for Tuason, who's just been tapped to oversee some Paranormal Activity reboot only four or five people on the entire planet can possibly be excited about. If there's one thing the studio system in its present form has almost been set up to effectuate, it'll be to stifle this recent horror renaissance with terminally flimsy product and morbidly unoriginal ideas.

undertone is now showing in cinemas nationwide.