Every great artist borrows ideas from the past to make their art, but director Ian Tuason admits that he stole from an unlikely source for his new horror movie undertone. As Tuason reveals in a chat with Discussing Film this week, he stole from an actual real-life ghost!
More specifically, Tuason stole a line of dialogue from an EVP recording.
He explains to Discussing Film, “There’s a line actually I took from one of those EVP recordings. I was watching this show about the security camera footage in Toys R Us, and there was a voice that was heard. What it said was, ‘I’ve come here with Betty. I’m so cold.’ I took the line, ‘I’m so cold.’ I put it into the film.”
“So yeah, I stole from a ghost. That’s an actual line that a ghost said.”
We’ve tracked down the show that Tuason is referring to and it’s a series titled Haunted Lives: True Ghost Stories, which aired in the early ’90s on CBS and UPN. The series was hosted by Leonard Nimoy (“Star Trek”), and the dialogue Tuason plucked from was featured in the episode “Ghosts R Us.” The episode aired on May 15, 1991, and believe it or not, it was directed by none other than horror master Tobe Hooper (Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Poltergeist)!
Wikipedia recaps the segment, “A female stockperson in Toys R Us in Sunnyvale, California is frightened from her job in the storeroom. Her supervisor doesn’t know what to make of it until her other employees tell their stories. Two of the employees discover the ghost could be Yonny Yonson, a working immigrant who died when the property was still the Old Murphy Ranch.”
You can watch the full episode of “Haunted Lives” down below!
Writer-director Ian Tuason tells us that he used dialogue from real paranormal EVP recordings in his new horror movie ‘UNDERTONE’.
“I stole from a ghost.” pic.twitter.com/SuFbWrwBiS
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) March 11, 2026
Writer-director Ian Tuason makes his feature debut on undertone, shot on location inside his childhood home in Toronto. He’ll next helm the new Paranormal Activity reboot.
Nina Kiri stars as Evy, a paranormal podcast host who moves into her dying mother’s house to be her primary caregiver. When she receives audio recordings of a young pregnant couple experiencing supernatural noises, she realizes the woman’s story mirrors her own. Each new recording scratches at her sanity, drawing her into a fate she cannot escape.
A24 releases undertone in theaters nationwide beginning TONIGHT.
