Undertone 2026 – A Canadian supernatural horror film turns podcast listening into dread—using disembodied voices, grief, and the demon Abyzou to make loneliness feel physical.
Loneliness can be loud, but it can also be strangely quiet—like a house that keeps running while conversations stop. Misryoum’s look at Ian Tuason’s Undertone (2026) begins with that kind of hush.
Undertone turns podcast culture into real horror
Undertone. a Canadian supernatural horror film. follows Evy Babic (Nina Kiri). a paranormal podcast host who’s also caring for her dying. unconscious mother.. The setup is simple enough to read as domestic tragedy—until the movie makes the routine itself feel predatory.. Evy’s days stretch into repetition. and the film leans hard on the monotony of caretaking: the long stretches. the emotional fatigue. the sense that time is passing without anything changing.
Misryoum was struck by how the film uses audio as both storytelling device and mood generator.. Undertone doesn’t treat podcasting as a gimmick; it treats listening as a ritual.. Evy and her friend Justin (Adam DiMarco) co-host a show. and their chemistry is one of the movie’s quiet pleasures—skepticism meets belief. banter meets interruption.. It feels lived-in, the kind of behind-the-mic rhythm people recognize from real recording sessions.
Disembodied voices make the house feel smaller
The central engine arrives through anonymous recordings Evy and Justin receive from a couple—Mike and Jessa (Jeff Yung and Keana Lyn Bastidas)—who claim something is escalating inside their home.. The tapes are genuinely unsettling. not because the film relies on constant jump scares. but because it builds dread out of implication: what you can’t see. what you can’t verify. what your imagination fills in anyway.
That choice becomes the movie’s most divisive creative decision.. With the exception of Evy and her mother, most characters remain off-screen.. Justin is a voice.. The couple is a voice.. Even the boyfriend Evy used to know exists as sound rather than a presence.. Misryoum reads this as more than style—it’s horror shaped by absence.. When you can’t watch someone’s face change. you have to listen harder. and listening harder is a form of surrender.. The house doesn’t just contain something; it starts containing your capacity to doubt.
There’s also a pointed reflection hidden in plain sight.. Undertone draws a line between “content” and “confession,” showing how easily an atmosphere of fear can be packaged.. At the same time, the film undercuts that modern comfort.. These aren’t clever recordings made for attention; they’re warnings that arrive late, like messages you can’t unhear.
Grief, motherhood, and a demon that fits the theme
Evy’s performance anchors the film.. Kiri’s work is quiet without being passive, believable without flattening the story into realism.. Undertone’s midsection—particularly around a party Evy leaves to attend—keeps its emotional logic deliberately unresolved.. Misryoum found that ambiguous hesitation to be one of the movie’s most honest notes.. Leaving the house, even temporarily, doesn’t automatically feel brave.. It can feel like abandoning someone who can’t respond.. It can feel like a betrayal of the role you’ve been forced to wear.
The film’s third act leans into a specific demon: Abyzou.. It’s the moment where Undertone most clearly reveals its thematic ambition—using folklore not as a monster-of-the-week. but as a lens for motherhood and what motherhood demands when it becomes grief management.. Misryoum also sees Undertone walking in the neighborhood of stories and films that treat horror as inheritance—something passed through households. myths. and bodies rather than just “events” that happen to strangers.
A still camera, a narrowing space, and dread without spectacle
Visually, Undertone is almost aggressively patient.. The camera often stays put, letting silence do the work.. When movement appears, it feels earned rather than decorative.. Misryoum especially noticed a trick in the back half: a pan that looks like it’s moving away from Evy but is actually closing in.. It’s the kind of shift that doesn’t announce itself.. Instead of telling you to feel afraid, it makes you realize fear has already arrived.
The film does use Dutch angles early in the third act. but by then it can feel like the story has already trained your nervous system.. Undertone spends most of its runtime asking you to trust listening and observation over cues.. Those tilted frames read like a momentary override—less necessary than what the movie has already proven it can do.
Still, Undertone’s restraint is exactly what makes it land. It’s a horror film that doesn’t compete with your attention span. It builds a pressure system and lets it settle.
For audiences who want horror to knock objects over, this won’t match that expectation. Undertone isn’t built for spectacle or breathy doorway terror. It’s built for the specific kind of dread that comes when your home feels emotionally uninhabited—even while you’re still living inside it.
In the end. Misryoum reads Undertone as a story about the horror of continuity: caretaking that never becomes “the end. ” conversations that never restart. and the way the mind fills silence with meaning.. Like a nursery rhyme that changes once you understand the words. Undertone takes quiet and makes it legible—then makes it frightening.
Undertone is Directed by Ian Tuason. Written by Ian Tuason. Starring Nina Kiri, Adam DiMarco, Michèle Duquet, Keana Lyn Bastidas, and Jeff Yung. In theaters now.
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