undertone

As horror continues to thrive through the 2020s, A24 is preparing to drop a terrifying gem in Ian Tuason’s excellent “undertone.” It’s a movie that has some of the themes that have dominated the form lately like grief and lack of faith but embeds them in a sonic and visual nightmare that announces its filmmaker as a major talent. Horror directors often cut corners when it comes to form, using cheap tricks like jump scares, overcooked music cues, or even just presuming that the spooky storytelling will do all the work for them. Tuason prioritizes elements such as negative space, a constrained POV, canted angles, and simply incredible sound design to lock viewers into the same nightmare as his protagonist. He doesn’t want you to watch something unfold; he wants you to feel it as sound and image reach something primally fearful. Some will argue that all of the themes of “undertone” don’t connect, but that’s a feature, not a bug. This is a film that doesn’t feel the need to explain itself. Nightmares rarely do.