I’ve developed a rather bad attitude regarding found-footage horror films over the years.
Films like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity had their moments, but the genre they birthed got tired fast. I’ve always hated how people supposedly manage to keep filming the proceedings while they are being attacked by demons, ghosts, zombies and whatnot.
Now, with Undertone, we are getting a new kind of horror, the second cousin of found-footage horror films … the podcast-must-go-on horror movie. Yes, people doing podcasts while getting haunted by demons is a thing now. Their lives are in danger, and the devil is taunting them—but they must continue to do their podcast as they are being besieged!
Writer-director Ian Tuason has made a decent-looking movie, and the use of sound in Undertone definitely results in a creepy moment or two. But this is a movie that lacks a compelling reason to watch it. The plot seems to be leading up to something, and it keeps you waiting, and waiting, and waiting, until that big moment at the very end where it all comes together.
Nope … that moment never arrives. It’s a big nothing by the time the credits roll, in the tradition of that lame ending to Blair Witch in which the guy looks like he is peeing in the corner. When you don’t have a big budget (and Undertone was reportedly made for a mere $500,000), you are limited in what you can do. While I can admire some of the technical aspects of the movie, as well as the decent central performance by Nina Kiri as the main podcaster, Tuason just doesn’t provide a story with stakes high enough to make us care.
Yes, I just couldn’t stand the way in which the protagonists kept doing their podcast as the world unraveled around them. Yes, Satan and his minions are planting a virus in your soul, but damn you if you come off that mic and run the hell out of your house! There’s a highly implausible movie to be made!
What’s next? Will somebody get attacked by a shark while blogging? As they are bleeding out via lost limbs, will they just continue to type away about Portland’s best donuts until their final take on the magnificent Boston kreme is revealed? Somebody probably made that movie already.
Addendum: The small audience I saw this with applauded when the movie was over, and a moviegoing friend of mine really liked it and thought my reasoning for disliking it was lame. I still didn’t like the movie, but I guess I’m glad he did. He gets crankier than I do when he doesn’t like a film.