Studio:   A24
Director: Ian Tuason
Writer:   Ian Tuason
Producer: Dan Slater, Cody Calahan
Stars:    Nina Kiri, Adam DiMarco, Michele Duquet, Keana Lyn Bastidas, Jeff Yung

Review Score:

Summary:

The skeptical host of a paranormal podcast grows unnerved as she sees disturbing similarities emerge between mysterious audio files and her troubled personal life.

Synopsis:

With her close friend Justin Manuel, who records from a separate location while she records from her childhood home to care for her comatose Mama, Evy Babic cohosts “The Undertone Podcast,” where Justin is the believer and Evy is the skeptic about the supernatural stories they explore. Prior to recording their latest episode, the two friends briefly chat about Mama’s worsening physical condition as well as concerns regarding Evy’s neglectful boyfriend Darren.

For their latest episode, Justin tells Evy about a cryptic email he received from an unrecognized address with 10 audio files attached. The first file introduces a man named Mike who begins recording his girlfriend Jessa talking in her sleep. Evy and Justin hear Jessa singing “London Bridge Is Falling Down.”

The second file features Jessa sleepwalking while “London Bridge Is Falling Down” plays in reverse. Justin also hears the words “Mike kill all,” although Evy does not.

Justin’s online research into the history of London Bridge reveals that Eleanor of Provence, a queen consort during England’s Middle Ages who financed the bridge’s construction, had nine children who died. Fearing it might collapse, Eleanor reportedly ordered London Bridge’s builders to bury orphaned children alive in the bridge’s foundation as a sacrifice.

Justin has Evy listen to “Baa Baa Black Sheep” backwards. He then adds that the song is supposedly about suffering children.

At the end of the third file, Justin and Evy hear a sink filling up with water from a faucet that seemingly turned on by itself. With Evy starting to feel strange, she and Justin agree to suspend recording for the night.

Waking with morning sickness the next day, Evy makes a doctor’s appointment for a pregnancy test. A nurse makes a house call to examine Evy’s mother. Darren also calls about a party he’s hosting at his place, and Evy eventually decides to take a break from continually monitoring Mama to go out.

When she returns home, Evy is alarmed to find Mama collapsed on her bedroom floor despite being immobile. Dr. Ram calls to confirm Evy is six weeks pregnant. Among other odd observations, Evy becomes perplexed when she finds an upstairs faucet running even though her mother remains bedridden.

Evy sees that a religious figurine she removed earlier mysteriously returned to Mama’s nightstand. Evy puts the figurine on a shelf in a closet.

Evy wistfully listens to an old voicemail in which Mama says, “I’m praying for you.” Evy then researches hidden messages in children’s prayers and uncovers connections between nursery rhymes and accusation of evil and sin.

Prior to recording the next piece of their podcast, Justin asks Evy about personal problems including her mother, Darren, and drinking alcohol again. Evy cuts off Justin’s questions.

On the fourth audio file, Evy and Justin hear Jessa playing with a vintage talking doll. Jessa and Mike mention a baby’s room even though they don’t have a child. Strange banging sounds are heard, which Evy attributes to bad plumbing. Justin notes a hidden message he’s unable to make out.

In the fifth file, Jessa speaks strange words while sleeping. Evy begins feeling uneasy again, so she and Justin once again suspend their recording session.

Instances of subtle paranormal activity like flickering lights haunt Evy. While investigating an audio artifact in the fifth file, Evy makes out the words “let me know the truth.” Evy also has a disturbing nightmare involving her mother.

During the next podcast session, Justin deciphers Jessa’s previous mutterings as “come in Abyzou” spoken backwards. Research identifies Abyzou as a female Middle Eastern demon known as “The Taker of Children.” Abyzou was often blamed for miscarriages and newborn deaths because she was believed to be envious of mothers due to her own infertility.

Another legend adds that Abyzou supposedly entered a statue of St. Rita of Cascia, the patron saint of cursed mothers. Locals claimed a woman who worshipped the statue killed her husband for cheating and then killed their baby.

Evy cuts off Justin with a request to play the sixth audio file. The recording contains Jessa and Mike discussing Jessa’s nighttime ramblings.

Justin finds overlapping voices speaking simultaneously on the seventh file. Jessa and Mike mention a baby again. An unidentified baby is heard crying. Mike freaks out when he hears Jessa scream.

Justin decides to finally reply to the email account that sent the audio files. His message is returned as undeliverable. Justin notices that the letters he thought were random in the email address actually spell “come in Abyzou” backwards.

Loud thumps wake both Mike and Jessa on the eighth file. A nursery rhyme plays while a baby cries and Jessa screams. Justin and Evy are alarmed to recognize the song as the same version of “Baa Baa Black Sheep” they listened to previously.

Justin does an online search for “come in Abyzou” spelled backwards. He finds a psychology study performed on two mothers who were fixated on the phrase. One of them spent days texting those same letters to random phone numbers before drowning her child in a kitchen sink. The other woman was a ceramic artist who gave out hundreds of figurines of dead children before committing suicide while five months pregnant.

Because of how frightened he now is, Justin suggests trashing the entire podcast episode. Evy insists on seeing it all the way through, but they agree to pause for the evening.

Evy tearfully tells her unresponsive mother that she is pregnant. Evy openly questions her fitness for motherhood.

Listening to a meditation app causes Evy to fall asleep. A disturbing vision wakes her to seemingly hear Mama inexplicably talking in her sleep.

Evy and Justin record their next podcast live. The ninth audio file features Jessa talking about praying after a terrifying sleep paralysis experience where a shadow briefly took Mike’s place in their bed.

An anonymous caller to the podcast claims Mike and Jessa lived near him and police found them dead, but his call cuts out before he can elaborate. A second caller details a similar story in which a distraught mother played children’s songs in reverse, heard loud banging in vents, and gruesomely murdered her baby by putting it in a trash bag she repeatedly slammed against a furnace.

Evy forces a reluctant Justin to play the final audio file. Jessa is heard on the recording repeating, “she’s listening” before adding, “I have to warn her.” Loud bangs are heard again. Time seemingly stops for Evy. Children’s music and Jessa’s screams precede a light bulb bursting in Evy’s room.

Jessa unexpectedly says Justin’s name on the recording. Evy accuses Justin of setting her up, which he vehemently denies.

A third caller continually repeats, “I’d like to speak with Mary.” A fourth caller taunts that Abyzou was waiting in the tenth file for Evy and Justin to release her at the witching hour. Evy observes that crayon sketches she had been absent-mindedly drawing form a disturbing image.

A caller identified as distraught mother Abby pleads for help to stop her baby’s crying. While trying to talk Abby out of doing something harmful, Evy confesses that when her mother got sick, she refused to pray with her. Mama soon stopped eating and talking, and Evy now blames herself for “killing” her mother. Abby responds with cackling that transforms into a demon’s voice telling Evy it is too late.

While a panicking Justin warns her to flee the house, paranormal activity including red lights, strange sounds, a frightening face on an unplugged TV, and demonic voices overwhelms Evy. On her way upstairs, Evy sees her disturbing crayon drawings all over the walls. Evy finds Mama missing from her bed with the figurine in her place. A mirror reflection shows Mama walking backwards toward Evy. Evy screams in horror. A baby is heard crying.

Review:

Through genre releases that include “The Blackcoat’s Daughter” (review here), “Hereditary” (review here), and “The Lighthouse” (review here), A24 earned a reputation for slow-burn suspense where eerie atmosphere creates arthouse appeal. They typically traffic in “elevated horror” that attracts mainstream attention for being offbeat, experimental, or psychologically unsettling, as opposed to low-rent DTV sequels about killer puppets made for undiscerning stoners.

“Undertone” certainly fits the criteria for an A24 thriller. In addition to focusing intently on making a macabre mood, only two actors ever appear onscreen, and one of them doesn’t even speak. The entire film also takes place inside a single house. These can often be earmarks of a DIY project trying to churn out a cheap flick, yet these are all necessary components in “Undertone’s” plan to develop an intangible aura of dread that comes from vibes more than from visuals.

As with any boutique brand, not all A24 fright films are created equal. “Undertone” is partly produced by Black Fawn Films, a Canadian company known for horror movies that can be visceral or cerebral. Either way, and regardless if they are hits or misses, their titles generally have the touch of being crafted with a genuine appreciation for horror’s history rather than as one-off larks by auteurs who’d rather be making period dramas or droll comedies. As such, “Undertone” blends the Black Fawn feel with A24 aesthetics to create slow-burn suspense that’s taken seriously, but not to the point of highbrow pretentiousness.

Main character Evy appears in every scene of “Undertone.” Partnered with her unseen, “true believer” pal Justin, Evy occupies the skeptic side of the duo’s paranormal podcast. Evy recently returned home to care for her bedridden mother, who lies unconscious and unresponsive except for occasionally inexplicable movements Evy never witnesses, so Evy records from there while Justin calls in from a separate location.

For their latest episode, Justin and Evy dive into a collection of 10 audio files Justin received from an unknown email address with cryptic messaging. Normally, clicking an unsolicited attachment from an anonymous sender is a great way to give a computer a virus. In this case, it’s a great way to create content, because the files form a mystery around a man named Mike and his girlfriend Jessa, whom Mike started recording to capture what Jessa says in her sleep.

What Mike captures is a perplexing series of children’s songs, words spoken backwards, loud thumps in the night, an unidentified baby crying, and Jessa shrieking. Justin and Evy’s research into the clues uncovers grisly connections to folklore about mothers murdering their children, perhaps driven mad by Abyzou, an infertile demon motivated by envy to cause miscarriages and kill infants. Over the course of listening to these recordings, Evy sees strange similarities bleeding into her problem-plagued personal life as noises, visions, and possible paranormal activity seemingly parallel the ordeal Mike and Jessa went through.

“Undertone” operates a bit like an aural counterpart to “Skinamarink” (review here). Where that movie is essentially a feature-length montage of supposedly spooky imagery, “Undertone” initially plays like an assembly of sound bites, audio cues, and creepy music for an ongoing medley meant to unnerve ears.

A key difference between these two films is that a clear story eventually emerges so “Undertone” doesn’t rely solely on the haunting echoes of nursery rhymes or backmasking to carry the full weight of its frights. “Skinamarink” leaves it entirely up to the audience to create their own context. Those who don’t or can’t end up eating a nonsensical series of props and pictures. “Undertone’s” focus on audio forces imaginations to fill in visual blanks, but its obvious theme of parental anxiety means no one has to invent their own metaphors to find meaning behind the movie.

Another difference between “Skinamarink” and “Undertone” is that there’s far more filmmaking technique on display here. Slow zooms are a staple of “Undertone’s” cinematic style. Setups are framed to deliberately obscure details, like a nurse making a house call who is hidden by a wall. The camera has a habit of gliding casually, shooting Evy from angles where what she sees can’t be seen by the viewer, or making it feel like an invisible presence floats around her periphery. Again, atmosphere is important to this movie, and while the camera isn’t actively kinetic, writer/director Ian Tuason and director of photography Graham Beasley have clearly considered how to subtly compensate at least a little bit for the absence of action and repeated looks at the same person and location.

Making one more comparison to “Skinamarink,” “Undertone’s” atypical texture as audio-first horror that’s compact and patient makes it a divisive “love it” or “hate it” film where different viewers will have different experiences. Some will be enthralled by its hypnotic dreaminess and grim mystery. Others may be bored by the pace’s gradual build amid a narrow spotlight on one personality they may not take to. Since she’s onscreen so much, investing in Evy is important to synching with the story. Nina Kiri does well with a role that demands a lot from her face, though her perpetual dourness can add to the drag.

A piece of advice that applies no matter where one falls from the fence is to not look at “Undertone” with a lot of logic, since its timeline of events doesn’t hold up to reasonable questioning. The key piece of each audio file lasts less than a minute, yet Evy and Justin choose to listen to them in four separate sessions rather than all at once. It’s baffling that whenever the mystery deepens, they decide to wait until another day to go further even though all of the info is right there in front of them. Mike and Jessa’s recordings are the core of the podcast, but Justin and Evy only record a few minutes at a time. How short is each episode? Oddest of all is how long Justin waits before researching the email address that sent the files and then never researching Mike or Jessa at all.

Let this be one final reminder that “Undertone” is a dish best eaten for its frightful flavor. Looking too closely at the ingredients or complaining about the cutlery might spoil the mood-drenched meal.

Review Score: 55

Apr 17, 2026

UNDERTONE (2025)

“Undertone’s” atypical texture as audio-first horror that’s compact and patient makes it a divisive film where different viewers will have different experiences.