Horror marketing loves to embrace hyperbole, and it’s increasingly common for every major horror movie to be the scariest film since celluloid’s creation or that test screenings caused frightened fans to pass out, vomit, or lose their minds. This type of exaggerated advertising is white noise to most horror fans, but it’s always exciting when a film lives up to the expectations and actually delivers.
A24’s undertone, directed by Ian Tuason in his feature film debut, chronicles the slow dissolution of a supernatural podcaster, Evy (Nina Kiri), as she and her co-host, Justin (Adam DiMarco), try to get to the bottom of a mysterious series of audio recordings. Evy’s investigation into the unknown dovetails with her returning home to look after her dying mother, which triggers a domino effect of darkness. undertone feels cut from the same cloth as Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project, yet the bulk of its scares come from disturbing sound design that’s turned up to 11. A true “aural horror film,” undertone is an original horror film that deserves its early praise.
To celebrate undertone’s release, Ian Tuason opens up about the power of sound design, breaking the horror genre down to raw data, how his experience with virtual reality horror has helped shape his filmmaking, and which Steven Soderbergh film was a surprising influence on undertone.
SPOILER WARNING: The following interview does contain brief spoilers for undertone.
BLOODY DISGUSTING: Sound design is obviously such a crucial component to undertone, but I’ve seen a grander “aural horror trend” lately between this film and other projects like Calls, Archive 81, even A Quiet Place to some extent, not to mention all sorts of horror podcasts that have revived the art of radio plays. What interested you in aural horror as a topic, and why do you think it’s starting to have a bit of a moment right now?
IAN TUASON: I have a background in virtual reality content, and I have had a lot of success with my horror material. I had the idea, when I first put on a VR headset, that horror would be perfect for this medium because you can’t really escape it. I made a couple of things in that space that did really well, and it scared people. I thought about directional sound a lot when I’m making these things. 3D soundscapes are what I feel like I’m creating. When I was writing undertone, I just had that in mind. There was actually more audio direction in the script than there was camera direction. That’s how I went in thinking about it.
I did think about A Quiet Place and Archive 81. A Quiet Place made me think about how silence can be used as a scare, and then Archive 81 was more of how found footage could be audio-only. And how that can be scarier than found footage. I didn’t really have any inspiration from these films directly, but they did give me a good idea of what could work and what didn’t work. I just took things that worked the best. A lot of the sound design ideas came from other movies — not just horror — like the noise-canceling effect of the headphones was from the movie Kimi.
The Soderbergh film.
IT: Exactly. Right. Do you remember when she puts on the headphones, and it just goes quiet? I even wrote in the script that it goes silent, and when she starts typing on her keyboard, we don’t hear the keys typing. Then I started to realize that, wow, Evy can’t hear anything behind her. I tried to find ways to creep myself out while writing it, which I think is a good sign.
I read that you created a big spreadsheet that kind of catalogues the pattern and ratio of unsettling “creeps” and scarier “screams” across films like The Blair Witch Project, The Exorcist, and Paranormal Activity in order to figure out the right structure, pacing, and approach for the film. I think that “math-ification” of a genre can be fascinating. How was that data helpful here, and is it an approach you’ll use in the future?
IT: Yeah, I’m always going to use that formula, well, at least for horror films. I wanted to make sure that I scared people. So I just watched the scariest movies I’ve seen and realized that there are these little moments that build up to a larger scare. It doesn’t always have to be a jump scare, but most of the time it is. I watched each movie with a journal and a pen, and I just started counting every time there was a moment. Then I came out with this ratio of “creeps” to “scares.” When I wrote undertone, I wanted the ratio to be right because the ratio was always similar in all these movies. Well, for The Exorcist, the ratio was 2:1, but with Paranormal Activity, it was like 5:1. In that case, I just met in the middle and made it like 3:1. Then I made sure that there were the same number of scares in the movie.
Furthermore, the miscarriage demon that’s explored in the movie, Abyzou, is such a fascinating piece of myth and folklore. Is this a demon you were familiar with before, or something that you discovered during research?
IT: I discovered Abyzou while doing research, and as the story developed. Then I eventually got to the point where I had Evy faced with the decision whether or not to keep her child. That was something that I added kind of late in the writing process. Once I did that, I went on to research if there were any demons that take babies. You know, something that Evy may want to call, intentionally or unintentionally, to get her out of that situation. Then I discovered Abyzou, and it was perfect.
It’s such a good fit. When I learned it’s a “real” demon, I was like, “Oh my God, this is great.”
IT: Right after I learned about Abyzou, I immediately started researching if any other movies have used this demon. “Please no, please no.”
I’ve really loved this boom of subversive horror that’s come out of Canada lately, between undertone, Skinamarink, Red Rooms, In A Violent Nature, and more. Do you think there’s a particular reason for that trend right now? Is there a certain Canadian horror identity that you’re trying to reflect?
IT: I never had the intention to reflect any Canadian cinema tenets, but I can understand why there’s a lot coming out of here now. Pontypool is a little older, but that was a big influence on me. I’m not sure. We do have less, in some ways, in Canada. We do have less to work with, and we want to make the most out of less. You’re able to actually make a better movie through that philosophy than if you had more. That’s what’s happened with me, and maybe if you ask those guys in Edmonton [Kyle Edward Ball], they’d say something similar.
It’s also important to recognize that horror was already heading in the direction of embracing creepypasta culture. It’s been like a good ten years that I’ve been trying to figure out how to write a creepypasta movie and make it feel like a creepypasta, rather than just a movie. I think a lot of these films nailed it, undertone included, and I’m excited to see Backrooms and Obsession.
After hitting such heights in VR, would you be interested in returning to that space in some capacity and translating other franchises to that medium?
IT: No, I went from cinema to VR, and then I realized how much I love cinema. I went back to cinema and now I’m not leaving. That frame — that rectangle — is the perfect medium to tell or express a dream. We dream in that frame. We don’t dream in 360, right? There are cuts, and there are edits in our dreams, right? In VR, there can’t be many cuts because you would disorient the viewer. I think VR is best used as just an experience. But when you’re creating the language of dreams, you need a frame, and VR doesn’t have that frame.
undertone is in theaters on March 13, courtesy of A24.
