When writer-director Ian Tuason was working on the script for the buzzy new A24 horror movie, Undertone, he scared himself. He was stuck at his childhood home, caring for his ailing parents, when he began researching the long-held theory — or urban legend — that some songs contain hidden messages.
“When I first started listening for the hidden message that was apparently in ‘Stairway to Heaven’ played backwards, I was immediately terrified,” the first-time director says. While he didn’t hear the alleged secret message (“Here’s to my sweet Satan/he one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan”), Tuason says the experience of listening to the backwards singing alone was “really creepy.” That convinced him that the germ of an idea he’d had could work — that he could make a horror movie that largely relied on sound to deliver the fright, rather than jump scares or elaborate visuals. That film, Undertone, hits theaters Friday.
Undertone follows Evy (Nina Kiri), a podcaster who, alongside a co-host named Justin (Adam DiMarco), digs into paranormal mysteries. The movie finds Evy caring for her dying mother (Michèle Duquet) in her childhood home, simultaneously pregnant by a bad ex and unsure if she wants to keep the child. She can’t even ask her mom for advice; the woman is basically incapacitated.
“I was struggling with those feelings of remorse and guilt and then trying to suppress them with drinking,” Tuason says of channeling his own caretaking experience into the character. “Whatever darkness I fell into, I just drew from that when I was writing Evy.”
While Evy and Justin’s show, The Undertone Podcast, usually features them casting a skeptical eye on supposed hauntings — Ouija boards, cursed videos, etc. — that stance starts to unravel when they receive a mysterious email with a collection of voice memos. Over the course of these recordings, a couple, Abby and Mike, start to hear unexplained noises in their house and begin delving into the mythology of Abyzou, a demon from ancient folklore who’s known for causing miscarriages and killing newborns. The recordings also feature children’s songs played backwards, revealing terrifying messages: “Lick the blood off” via “Ba Ba Black Sheep” and “Mike kill all” in “London Bridges.” Tuason didn’t even have to dream up these phrases; you can really hear them when the songs are reversed.
Horror rules normally caution against playing recordings from seemingly disturbed strangers (see: The Ring), but Justin and Evy defy those rules. As Evy becomes more and more isolated in her mother’s near-empty home, the lines between the recordings and her life start to blur, the terrifying audio soundtracking her nights even when she doesn’t have her podcasting headphones on. The eeriness of the soundscape turns a once-familiar home into an alien landscape, a liminal zone where anything is possible. Tuason, then, doesn’t have to rely on shadowy figures and visual tricks to spook the audience — it’s all mood.
To set the scene for the horror that unfolds, Tuason filmed the movie in his mother’s home, where he’d written the script — that familiarity breeding the unease he wanted to bring to Evy’s story. A fan of The Exorcist, Tuason knew how effective it can be when the benign becomes sinister. “I studied that movie and I realized that it took a couple of things that were supposed to be safe — which is religion and a little girl — and then weaponized them,” he says. “I felt like that my mom represented something even safer.”
Tuason, left, and Kiri on set.
Dustin Rabin*
Children’s songs fall under that same umbrella, although, he concedes, “a lot of them are dark, even when played forward.” He also recorded all the Mike and Abby memos we hear in the film on an iPhone, aiming for a rawness not possible in the studio. Tuason didn’t let Kiri hear those messages until they started filming, so he could catch her natural reactions.
“The recordings are so raw,” Kirki says. “Having them in your ear so intimately was shocking. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was so blown away. I didn’t expect it to penetrate so deeply and to just get under my skin in that way.”
Tuason says that there are two audio worlds in the movie — the world of the house and that of the podcast. He utilized Dolby Atmos technology — sound that comes from all directions in the theater — so that both would be immersive, and unnerving. “The two worlds start bleeding into each other as we progress into the movie,” he says. I had to place the audio in different directions and disorient the audience, because I want to disorient Evy.”
Kiri — who was freaked out just reading the script — recalls an instance during the premiere that particularly shook the audience and, even, her. “You can be in the movie and still get freaked out,” she says, laughing, “And that’s because of the sound.”