Undertone (2026) Review: A Promising Soundscape Horror That Never Finds Its Voice

⭐ Rating: 2/5

Undertone

Directed by: Ian Tuason

Written by: Ian Tuason

Starring: Nina Kiri, Adam DiMarco

Release Date: March 13, 2026

A Podcast Horror With an Interesting Setup

Undertone is a soundscape horror experiment that follows Evy (Nina Kiri), a podcaster who has returned home to care for her dying mother. The emotional situation is heavy enough, but Evy’s life is already complicated before the supernatural begins to creep in.

She lives with a boyfriend back home, though their relationship seems to be hanging by a thread. Meanwhile, every morning at 3 AM she wakes up to record her podcast, Undertone, with her best friend Justin (Adam DiMarco).

Why 3 AM? Justin lives in England, and this awkward hour is the compromise they’ve reached to keep the show going.

Through dialogue we slowly piece together that Evy and Justin may share some romantic history of their own. Justin has moved to London to be with another woman, yet he still offers to fly back to America to support Evy while her mother lies upstairs, barely clinging to life.

Evy declines.

The “Cursed Recordings” That Drive the Story

The podcast’s latest episode centers on a strange email from a listener who claims to possess ten recordings that might be cursed.

The tapes were made by a couple experimenting with sleep recordings—at first simply trying to capture a girlfriend talking in her sleep. But as each new recording plays, the story begins to expand.

Soon there are disturbing elements creeping into the audio:

• The sound of a baby crying

• Strange nighttime whispers

• References to children’s lullabies

Those lullabies provide the film’s first bridge between Evy’s podcast and her real life. Her mother used to sing “Baa Baa Black Sheep” to her when she was a child. When that same song appears within the cursed recordings, the boundaries between the podcast story and Evy’s reality begin to blur.

In theory, this is where Undertone should become terrifying.

In practice, it never quite gets there.

Style Over Substance

The central problem with Undertone is that the film is simply too sloppy to be scary.

Director Ian Tuason clearly has visual talent, but he stretches this idea to its breaking point. Long camera movements and drifting pans attempt to build tension, yet they often reveal… nothing.

I enjoy a good atmospheric camera move as much as the next pretentious film critic, but when the camera repeatedly pans across empty rooms without a payoff, the technique becomes tedious rather than suspenseful.

The film begins to feel less like a horror movie and more like an experiment searching for a point.

Nina Kiri Deserved More to Work With

Nina Kiri is a strong screen presence and an easy actress to root for.

Unfortunately, she is left carrying nearly the entire movie alone.

Other than Evy’s comatose mother upstairs, almost no characters share the screen with her. Justin exists largely as a voice through podcast recordings and video calls.

That’s an enormous burden for any performer.

Kiri does her best, but the screenplay doesn’t give her enough dramatic material to sustain a feature-length film by herself. A seasoned actor sharing the frame with her might have helped disguise the weaknesses in the script.

Instead, the thin writing is constantly exposed.

A Horror Experiment That Echoes Skinamarink

After the screening I was talking with my podcast co-host Jeff from the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast, and the comparison that came to mind was Skinamarink.

Both films attempt to replace traditional storytelling with mood, sound design, and visual experimentation.

Sometimes that approach can produce something haunting.

Here, however, it results in something closer to sound and fury signifying nothing—an experiment in style that never quite discovers what it wants to say.

One Last Podcaster Complaint

As someone who records podcasts myself, I have to ask a simple question.

Who records their podcast five minutes at a time?

In the film, Evy and Justin repeatedly record small snippets over Zoom, stopping and picking up the conversation days later. If that’s their normal recording strategy, it makes Evy’s commitment to waking up at 3 AM even stranger.

If I’m waking up at 3 AM to record a podcast, we’re finishing the entire episode in one sitting—not planning to repeat that routine every morning for a few minutes of audio.

Final Verdict

Undertone has the skeleton of an intriguing horror movie. The concept of cursed recordings merging with a podcaster’s personal life could have been genuinely unsettling.

But the film stretches its minimal story far beyond what the material can sustain. Without stronger characters, sharper scares, or a clearer narrative purpose, the result feels less like a chilling horror film and more like an unfinished experiment.

And experiments can be interesting.

They’re just not always satisfying.

⸻

Tags

horror movies, indie horror, undertone 2026 review, nina kiri, horror film review, experimental horror, cursed recordings horror, podcast horror movies, indie film review