What happens when what you hear backwards scares you more than any ghost?
Ian Tuason’s The Undertone is not your typical horror movie. Here fear not only comes from the supernatural, but from guilt, faith and those expectations that we all carry when growing up.
The plot: A paranormal podcast host, Evy (Nina Kiri, from The Handmaid’s Tale), begins to receive audios that, when played backwards, reveal messages from the beyond. But the real horror is in her real life: caring for her dying Catholic mother, while dealing with an unplanned pregnancy and a boyfriend who doesn’t even realize it.
“How do you confront a demon of a faith you’ve already abandoned? If you grew up with those images and then you move away, those same images can become disturbing,” explains Tuason.
The director was inspired by caring for his own parents during a terminal illness. He filmed in the house where he grew up. The image of the Virgin, which should protect, here only judges.
The most powerful thing: The movie talks about what adults do to children, and suddenly Evy is about to have power over a child. That terrifies her more than any ghost.
“In my family I have seen that care falls on women. There is this expectation of being the perfect daughter, of doing everything well,” says Kiri.
The Undertone is already in theaters and screened at Sundance. It’s not just scares: it’s an uncomfortable mirror of what it means to carry the past while trying to build your future.
