undertone
Ian Tuason's undertone is the horror film equivalent of a room with bad acoustics. You hear something wrong. You cannot locate it. You cannot make it stop. And then it gets worse.
Full analysis below
Not a woke trap. The film's progressive elements, primarily its focus on bodily autonomy anxiety around the protagonist's pregnancy and its treatment of Catholic tradition as a source of guilt rather than comfort, are present from the opening minutes. This is not a bait-and-switch. The marketing positioned it as an arthouse horror film exploring grief, faith, and caregiving. That is exactly what you get. The film's ideology is baked into its DNA and visible to anyone paying attention.
Ian Tuason's undertone is the horror film equivalent of a room with bad acoustics. You hear something wrong. You cannot locate it. You cannot make it stop. And then it gets worse.
The premise is clever and it earns its concept. Evy (Nina Kiri) co-hosts a paranormal podcast with her friend Justin, who believes in everything and she believes in nothing. She has moved home to care for her comatose mother. Justin sends her audio files from a couple named Mike and Jessa, whose recordings contain apparent supernatural content. What starts as material for the podcast becomes something else entirely.
Tuason made a structural choice that sounds like a gimmick until you experience it: every character except Evy and her mother exists only as a voice. You never see Justin, never see Mike or Jessa, never see anyone else on screen. This forces the horror to live entirely in what you hear and in Kiri's face. It works. It works terrifyingly well. The sound design by Graham Beasley is not decoration here. It is the film's argument. When the recordings of Jessa sleeptalking begin to distort, when songs from Evy's childhood appear reversed in the audio, when the distinction between what's on the recording and what's in the room starts to collapse, the effect is genuinely unnerving in ways that jump scares cannot replicate.
But undertone is doing something besides being a very good horror film. It is also a film about what Catholicism does to women who have complicated relationships with their bodies.
Evy is six weeks pregnant. She hasn't told the father, hasn't told Justin, and the revelation lands in the film's midsection with quiet weight. Her dying mother is deeply Catholic. Evy's skepticism about the paranormal is inseparable from her skepticism about the faith she was raised in. The reversed nursery rhymes aren't just scary. They are her childhood transformed into something sinister. The Catholic saint whose statue appears to be possessed in one of Justin's claims is not played for blasphemy; it is played as Evy's worst fear about what she was taught to believe.
What is the film saying about all of this? That's where it gets genuinely complicated. The film does not condemn Catholic faith. It depicts faith as something Evy has not escaped even while rejecting it. Her mother, comatose, still radiates the weight of a lifetime of devotion. Evy is not free of what she was raised with. The haunting she experiences is partly supernatural and partly the haunting that inherited belief always performs on people who leave it behind.
From a traditional values perspective, the film occupies uncomfortable ground. The pregnancy is not treated as a moral issue. It is treated as a source of anxiety and an additional layer of guilt. The film does not advocate for any particular choice, which is either neutrality or evasion depending on your reading. The most significant traditional element is the caregiving relationship at the film's center. Evy moved home to care for her dying mother. This is not presented as a burden. It is presented as love, imperfect and complicated, but love.
A24's distribution and the film's festival origins signal arthouse sensibilities. The film rewards patient viewers. Horror fans looking for conventional scares will find enough here, but undertone's real project is psychological and the payoff requires sitting with discomfort rather than demanding resolution.
This is a serious piece of filmmaking with a $500,000 budget, a focused directorial vision, and a lead performance from Nina Kiri that carries more weight than the production could have survived without. Conservative audiences should go in aware of the pregnancy subplot and the ambivalent treatment of Catholic faith. The film is not hostile to belief. It is honest about how belief works on people, which can feel like the same thing.
Formula: Weighted Score = Severity × Authenticity Multiplier × Centrality Multiplier
🔴 Woke Tropes
| Trope | Severity | Authenticity | Centrality | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Institutional Religion as Guilt Architecture | 3 | 0.7 | 1 | 2.1 |
| Unaddressed Pregnancy as Value-Neutral | 3 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| TOTAL WOKE | 5.1 | |||
🟢 Traditional Tropes
| Trope | Severity | Authenticity | Centrality | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Caregiving as Love's Most Honest Form | 4 | 0.7 | 1.8 | 5.04 |
| Faith's Inescapability | 2 | 0.7 | 0.5 | 0.7 |
| Intergenerational Bond (Mother-Daughter) | 2 | 0.7 | 0.5 | 0.7 |
| TOTAL TRADITIONAL | 6.4 | |||
Score Margin: +1 TRAD
Director: Ian Tuason
CENTER-LEFT. Tuason is a Filipino-Canadian debut director whose stated thematic interests include Catholic guilt, inherited belief systems, and the physical and emotional experience of caregiving as a woman. His interviews reveal a filmmaker processing faith skeptically rather than attacking it. The film is not anti-Catholic so much as it depicts Catholicism as something the protagonist is ambivalent about, which is a more honest and more subversive framing.Ian Tuason is a Filipino-Canadian filmmaker making his feature directorial debut with undertone. The film premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival in July 2025 before its A24 theatrical release in March 2026. Tuason worked as a commercial director and short filmmaker before this project, which was shot on a $500,000 budget with Black Fawn Films and Slaterverse Pictures. He has since been attached to direct the next Paranormal Activity sequel, a significant vote of confidence from the horror industry. Tuason's approach to horror is rooted in sound design and implied threat rather than gore, working in the tradition of Pontypool and early Paranormal Activity.
Writer: Ian Tuason
Tuason wrote the screenplay as a vehicle for exploring the intersection of Catholic guilt, pregnancy anxiety, caregiving, and supernatural horror. The script relies on an unusual structural constraint: all characters except the protagonist Evy and her dying mother appear only as voices, never on screen. This forces the horror to exist entirely in sound and in Evy's reactions. The screenplay was reportedly drawn partly from Tuason's observations of family members navigating Catholic tradition and physical illness simultaneously.
Adult Viewer Insight
undertone will frustrate viewers looking for a clear ideological signal, and that frustration is probably intentional. The film depicts faith as inescapable even for skeptics, which is either a conservative argument about the permanence of religious formation or a progressive argument about the burden of inherited religion. Tuason does not resolve this. He leaves it as the horror. The pregnancy subplot matters. It is not dwelled upon, but it is not incidental. Evy's unannounced pregnancy adds to her physical and emotional isolation and connects thematically to the film's treatment of maternal guilt. The film does not moralize about her situation. Whether that absence of moralizing reads as neutral storytelling or as progressive framing depends entirely on what you bring to the theater. Conservative horror fans who can separate craft from ideology will find a lot to admire here. The sound design is extraordinary. Kiri's performance is the best work in a horror film so far this year. And the film's treatment of the caregiver-patient relationship, a daughter caring for her dying mother, is given real emotional weight. That is a traditional value honored without sentimentality.
Parental Guidance
Rated R. Not appropriate for children. The film is psychologically disturbing rather than graphically violent, but its content warrants the rating. Violence: Limited but disturbing in context. One scene involves a demonic entity and a possessed statue that Justin describes in detail over audio. The horror is primarily sound-based and psychological. Language: Moderate. Typical R-rated language usage. Sexual Content: None on screen. The protagonist's pregnancy is revealed and discussed but without any explicit content. Thematic Content: The film deals with Catholic guilt, inheritance of religious belief, caregiver grief, and the anxiety of unplanned pregnancy. These themes are handled with seriousness rather than exploitation but they are heavy. Age Recommendation: Adults only. Teenagers with parental guidance and a conversation about the themes. Discussion Points: What does the film say about the relationship between faith and fear? Does leaving a religion mean leaving its hold on you? Why does Evy care for her mother despite their differences?
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