undertone

Undertone is a very effective kind of horror, especially in how it tells a story both about, and via, the audio form. While it may trade in somewhat unoriginal genre tropes, its form and its function feel fresh, fluent and flippin' frightening. As an allegory for Catholic guilt, it's haunting; as an auditory experience, it'll fuck you up.

Tuason builds his film around sudden noises and the uncertainty of the partially glimpsed or unseen. The real stars of this clever one-location set-up are sound designer David Gertsman and mixer Jon Lawless, a team who manage to wring a jump-scare out of a dripping tap. Kiri gives a layered performance that foregrounds the strain that eclipses grief for a long-time carer.

There's a swirl of creepy noises in A24's new hyped-up horror Undertone – screaming, gargling, singing, banging – but nothing is quite loud enough to drown out the swirl of films it's cribbing from. It's a film that manages to be both cluttered and empty.

Undertone is a gloomy, conceit-heavy picture that loses itself in its influences. What there is precious little of in Undertone is Tuason's own ideas, and the film becomes so frustratingly derivative that all its other flaws are cast into much harsher light.