There’s an art to scaring people with sound. Directors like James Wan and Hokum’s Damian McCarthy have made careers out of skillfully manipulating the sound mixes in their films, building tension with silence and then breaking it with loud, assaultive sound. Earlier this year, another horror movie — A24’s undertone — took this phenomenon to the next level, taking a modest indie production (the film was made for just $500,000) and juicing it up with a Dolby Atmos sound mix designed to maximize the movie’s scares.
Although it does make evocative use of shadows and empty space, undertone’s storytelling is primarily audio-based. The story revolves around a podcaster named Evy (Nina Kiri) who’s staying in her childhood home caring for her dying mother. As so many are, the podcast is all about strange phenomena and bizarre true stories. As the show’s “resident skeptic,” Evy is usually immune to creepy things like the series of 10 audio recordings her co-host Justin (Adam DiMarco, heard but never seen) introduces in their latest episode. But something is different about these files, which we listen to alongside Evie as the terror escalates alongside the bizarre and jarring nature of the sounds themselves.
