When was the last time you were scared while watching a horror movie?
And I mean really scared, the kind of freaked-out that stays with you long after the movie is over.
A24’s new horror movie, Undertone, does just that. The Canadian film, out now in theaters nationwide, achieves what few other films in the genre accomplish — it projects real menace and suggests evil is lurking right behind you.
It’s 2026’s scariest film to date and joins recent films like Hereditary and Skinamarink as superior examples of elevated horror. But how did first-time feature film director Ian Tuason make a scary movie for the ages? And why is The Sopranos, HBO’s classic mob series that is definitely not scary, a key influence?
What Is ‘Undertone’ About?
Undertone centers around Evy (The Handmaid’s Tale‘s Nina Kiri), a young Canadian woman who produces a popular supernatural podcast with remote co-host Justin (The White Lotus‘ Adam DiMarco) from her quiet Toronto home. With her mother in the last stages of an unnamed terminal illness upstairs, Evy wants nothing more than to focus on her work rather than deal with her mother’s inevitable death. But when Justin finds 10 tapes that document a young couple’s haunting, Evy soon realizes she can’t avoid the ghosts of her past, present and uncertain future.
If that plot description is a little vague, that’s on purpose. Part of the pleasure of watching Undertone is letting Tuason slowly reveal what it’s all about — and what it all means.
The Origins of ‘Undertone’: From Radio to a One-of-a-Kind Horror Film Experience
“[Undertone] started as a radio play. I used to listen to a lot of narrative podcasts like Mark Phillips’ Homecoming, which was later adapted into a Prime Video show starring Julia Roberts. I was big into The Black Tapes [by Paul Mae and Terry Miles], too. I was writing the part with Justin and Evy investigating these hidden messages in these audio files when COVID hit, and then my parents got sick. I moved back into their home [to take care of them], which coincidentally is where we shot Undertone.”
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“The Exorcist really freaked me out and traumatized me as a kid because it took something in your home that’s safe and weaponized it. What would happen if something similar happened to me when I was taking care of my mom? That feeling of your home safety being weaponized against you?”
“That was my answer to the next question I had: What does Evy do in between recording her podcasts? Oh, she’s taking care of her dying mom. Next thing I know, we’re filming.”
The Sounds of Terror
Undertone differs from most horror movies in that it relies more on sound to tell its story and generate its scares.
“The original script had more sound direction than camera direction,” Tuason admits. “I specifically wrote ‘the baby cries to the rear right’ in the script, and you hear that. I related everything to the frame. It’s easier for the sound editor to know what I’m thinking [and what I want].”
“I was heavily involved in the sound mix, so I just started pointing in different directions and advised them to put a bang [at a key moment in the story]. I got that idea from my background in virtual reality. I made a lot of VR content, which requires you to create a 3D soundscape. In VR, there isn’t a frame, there’s just a space.”
Undertone is a horror movie that plays with ambiguity. For the bulk of the movie, you’re not sure what’s happening to Evy. Is she imagining things? Or is she really experiencing an actual haunting, something she’s always been skeptical of believing in?
“That was intentional,’ Tuason confesses. “I wanted to maintain a feeling [of uncertainty.] What’s happening in the movie? [What Evy goes through] may or may not be paranormal, and you don’t know for sure because a faucet could turn on by itself, right? That sound she hears upstairs could be the wood expanding in the floorboards. Even when the lights turn off, and Evy sees a figure in the dark, it’s brief, and then the lights turn back on, and the figure is gone. I couldn’t write something and put it in there unless it could be plausibly explained.”
How ‘Undertone’ Elevates Horror — and Drew Inspiration from ‘The Sopranos’
The result is a scary movie like no other. Eschewing blood, guts and any need for a clear explanation, Undertone marinates in the terror of ambiguity. You can even call it “elevated horror,” even though that term has some negative connotations among genre fans.
“I just discovered that ‘elevated horror’ was an offensive term to some people. That surprised me. There’s no agreed-upon definition of what it actually means. Some people take it like ‘my horror is better than yours.’ And I can’t really define it either, but I know it when I see it, like Hereditary or The Babadook. Those movies were made by filmmakers who are experts in their craft.”
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“When I was writing Undertone, I was taking ideas from different things that weren’t even in the horror genre. I took a lot from The Sopranos because I liked certain shots. I mean, some of Tony’s (James Gandolfini) dream sequences are really scary! Ultimately, I tried to make the best movie I could by making Undertone the scariest it could be.”
Mission accomplished, Ian.
Undertone is now playing in theaters.
