A podcaster caring for her dying mother listens to some recordings that seem to call forth a demon from the dark … or is it just her own tormented mind? Undertone underplays blood and gore and leans into subtler, more sinister scares. Don’t let the lack of content fool you: This is a disturbing, and disturbed, movie.
Mama’s house is quiet. So quiet.
The clock ticks. Mama breathes—labored, slow. Prints of Jesus and Mary watch silently from their frames, eyes serene as Mama edges closer to death.
Evy’s been caring for her fading mother for weeks now. Months. Even she speaks in whispers. Eat, Mama, she might murmur. Drink, Mama. But Mama doesn’t answer. She’s gone days without eating. Longer without speaking. Does she hear Evy talking to her? Understand? The answer remains veiled. Shrouded.
But around 3 a.m. some nights, the silence is pricked. That’s when Evy dons her headphones, turns on her microphone and gets to work.
She and her London-based friend, Justin, record a podcast unpacking real-world, supernaturally tinged horror stories. Justin is the duo’s true believer—ready to embrace ghosts, goblins and bumps in the night. Evy positions herself as the skeptic: Knocks are caused by old pipes. Doors slamming shut are the product of warped woodwork. Where Justin sees the supernatural, Evy sees prosaic explanations, unhooked imaginations, hoaxes.
It’s a good schtick. Until one night, the pair receives a set of 10 recordings from an unknown sender. The first one is creepy enough, so Justin and Evy decide to listen to all 10 in a row—and allow their fans to listen along.
But in Mama’s quiet house, something else may be listening. Waiting.
With one big exception, Evy is a mostly conscientious caretaker, doing all the unsavory tasks that the dying require. It’s hard and thankless work, and Evy should be commended for doing it.
We can also say this about Undertone: It seems to suggest that life begins at conception. And we’ll get into our reasoning as the review goes on.
Evy’s mother is a devout Catholic. Almost every wall in her home features a cross or a religious painting, and by her bedside, her reading glasses sit on an open Bible. We see a picture that reads, in a nice bit of foreshadowing, “Children are a heritage from the Lord.”
Evy has a voice message from her mother in happier times—Mama imploring Evy to attend Mass with her. “I’m praying for you,” Mama says on the message, and Evy plays that particular phrase repeatedly. We learn that Mama also asked Evy to pray with her, but Evy always made excuses why she couldn’t. Too busy, she’d say, or too tired.
Perhaps if Evy would’ve taken faith more seriously, she might’ve been better prepared for Obyzouth, the apparent main antagonist in Undertone.
Evy and Justin hear the name invoked in the recordings—spoken backward by one of the files’ creators. Justin tells us that Obyzouth is an ancient demon mentioned in a host of religious documents, including in Judaism and Islam. But Justin especially calls out a “Christian” text called the Testament of Solomon, written (Justin says) in the first century A.D.
(Note: The Testament of Solomon is indeed a real thing, though the date and the religious affiliation of its authors are much debated. In it, King Solomon is given a magic ring from the Archangel Michael that gives him the power to control—or destroy—demons.)
We’re told that Obyzouth has a particular interest in mothers and babies: She torments and possesses the former while killing the latter, and most of the horrors we hear involve that most precious (and here, most perverted) of earthly relationships. She was reputed to be behind stillborn babies and miscarriages, but Undertone pushes her role into a darker space: Justin alleges that the demon at one point possessed the statue of a Catholic saint—which then quickly became the object of diabolical devotion. (The skulls of babies, inverted crosses carved into the foreheads, were supposedly presented to the statue as an offering.)
Evy, we learn, is pregnant. And her apparent desire to not be pregnant—as suggested by some destructive choices she makes after learning about the pregnancy—perhaps opens her up to the demon’s influence.
It’s hard to determine just what sort of impact Mama’s Catholicism may have on the demon: We hear someone muttering Hail Mary prayers in Mama’s room—prayers that stop when Evy flicks on the light. Could it have been Mama, near death as she is, somehow trying to protect her daughter? Or was it the demon herself saying the prayers as a form of mockery? We don’t know for sure. But in one of the recordings, a woman says that a dark, supernatural presence also said a few Hail Marys.
Undertone is saturated with other supernatural imagery and mentions, from ghostly entities to demonic faces appearing on screens to children (and adults) summoning diabolic beings via nursery rhymes played backward. Faucets turn on inexplicably. Loud bangs are heard. Lights flicker and pop. And Mama sometimes seems to move around more than she ought.
Evy has a boyfriend, and Justin asks if they’re going to move in together. (Evy says that she’s actually thinking about getting her own place when her mother passes on.) And, as mentioned, she later learns that she’s pregnant, presumably from the same guy.
The recordings focus on another cohabitating boyfriend and girlfriend, Mike and Jessa. They’re apparently trying to have a baby—they speak of a nursery—but they’ve not successfully conceived yet.
We don’t actually “see” any violence. But we hear about plenty. And fair warning: This gets dark. Heinous injustices done against children stand as an important through line in Undertone.
Nursery rhymes set the stage. In Undertone, “Rock-a-Bye Baby” is interpreted as a baby falling and dying (a rare example of the film embracing what the song might actually be about). “London Bridges” references how a British noblewoman buried children alive under the bridge in an effort to keep them safe. (She allegedly killed her own children as well.) “Baa Baa Black Sheep” already has some dark historical elements to it, but Justin suggests that the black sheep—being absolutely worthless for wool—may have led the sheep’s owner to harm or kill his own children. (The exact connections are a little hazy.) When Justin and Evy play the rhyme backward, they hear the phrase “lick the blood” repeatedly.
The recordings sent to Justin and Evy apparently summon the demon to go to work. On the recordings or influenced by them, we hear about a great many atrocities connected to Obyzouth, including babies put in trash bags and smashed against walls. (One listener seems to have done the same thing on the podcast stream.) As Evy tries to fall asleep one night, she listens to a guided sleep meditation that morphs into a discussion of dead, bloated infants floating in water. A curious statue depicts a woman, mouth open in a moan or a cry, as a bevy of infants seem to crawl up her body.
We hear several references to suicide: One couple, apparently under the influence of the demon, was found at the bottom of a set of stairs (after they presumably threw themselves down them), plastic bags taped around their heads. Another victim killed herself while five months pregnant. Still another created ceramic sculptures of dead babies, which she handed out to neighbors before she also took her own life. Obyzouth seems to habitually drive her victims to suicide.
In the Positive Elements section, we noted that Evy’s mostly a conscientious caretaker. But one night, her boyfriend invites her to a party, and Evy decides to go—leaving her mother unattended. She promises Mama that she’ll just be gone for two to three hours. But Evy doesn’t return until the next morning. And when she finally checks on her mother, Evy finds Mama lying on the floor.
As noted, Evy is pregnant, and we see her wrestle with her “options,” as she tells a doctor. She ultimately asks for the number of a pregnancy clinic, which may indicate that Evy has decided to terminate the pregnancy. We also see Evy drinking heavy liquor after learning she’s pregnant. In a film that emphasizes how adults have mistreated, abused and sometimes killed the children in their lives, this sequence seems to suggest that A) the film considers the baby Evy’s carrying is, indeed, a child—not just a mass of cells—and B) Evy is willfully harming it.
Through quick flashes of imagery, we see someone’s face covered in plastic, gasping for breath. (The scenes are so quick that we can’t see clearly who is being suffocated.) A countertop appears to be covered in blood or another nasty substance.
[Spoiler Warning] Mama does seem to die during the run of the film. But when and how is intriguingly opaque. (It’s suggested that Evy might have had something to do with it.)
About nine f-words and two s-words. We also hear about six misuses of God’s name and four abuses of Jesus’ name.
From the outset, we know that Evy previously had a drinking problem: She announces she’s not going to attend a wedding because she knows there’ll be a lot of folks drinking there. But about a third of the way through the film, she eyes her mother’s liquor cabinet, pulls out a bottle of whiskey and pours part of its contents into a coffee mug. (We see that mug beside her workstation for the rest of the film.)
Justin, well aware of Evy’s past issues, notices something is awry and asks if she’s drinking again. Evy lies and says no. (This is particularly important because Evy learns that she’s pregnant before she begins drinking.)
Evy takes Mama’s various pill vials off her nightstand and places them in her bathroom. Later, Evy seems to take some of her mother’s drugs herself.
Even though she’s not eaten for some time, Mama sometimes makes messes. We see the mess on the bed, and Evy dutifully cleans up both the bed and Mama. (Nothing critical is seen; the camera focuses on Mama’s peaceful, passive face.)
Evy rushes into the bathroom and vomits—her first sign that she’s pregnant.
We see a number of old, artistic depictions of weeping, hurting children.
Undertone’s marketing copy tells us that it’s “the scariest movie you’ll ever hear.” And that might be true.
The makers of the film understand what so many other horror maestros do not: What you don’t see can be far scarier than what you do. Oh, the film comes with plenty of disturbing images, to be sure. But for the most part, they’re understated. Subtle. Often, I found myself staring at stairways or corridors, waiting for some horror to make its way on-screen. More often than not, I found myself staring at nothing. Which somehow felt far more disturbing than to find something in that empty space.
Instead of horrific visuals, director Ian Tuason relies on unsettling sounds—and he effectively plays with those sounds to make us question where they’re coming from. Are they simply on the audio tracks that Evy and Justin play for their audience? Or could it be that they’re coming from inside the house? Or, even inside Evy’s mind?
Undertone is a study in understatement—and how powerful and effective cinematic whispers can be in a horror landscape filled with screams. It steers clear of blood and gore and instead counts on our own growing sense of dread to partner with the film. For my money, movies such as Undertone are far more unsettling than the Saw or Scream movies of the world. You don’t need shocking content to shock.
But this film is shocking. Indeed, it feels just as disturbed as it is disturbing.
Undertone undermines the inherent beauty and goodness of the parent-child relationship. It never shows a child getting hurt or killed, but we hear about such atrocities—and sometimes we hear the acts themselves. Again, the movie trusts our own minds to fill in the blanks, and so they do—filling our brainpans with our own self-made images of tragedy and horror.
The movie manipulates its audience with a certain glee, introducing us to demons that seem to have no angelic counterpoint, diabolical forces unchallenged by God. This is a dark film—and because its horrors are so rooted in sound, we can’t simply close our eyes to escape.
There comes a point where Justin almost begs Evy to stop the podcast. To forget about the audio files. It’s fine to tell some innocuous ghost stories, he seems to suggest, but this goes too far. “I feel like we’re playing with fire,” he says.
Evy, of course, insists they press on. And perhaps that makes Undertone a cautionary story that warns its would-be viewers to steer clear … of itself.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
