Nina Kiri stars in Undertone, and plays the only character seen on screen.Dustin Rabin/The Associated Press
Humans may be primarily visual creatures, but for decades, the sharpest horror filmmakers have understood that if you want to really scare your audience, you can’t just focus on what they see. You have to think about what they hear.
The new Canadian horror film Undertone, out on March 13, understands how sounds can terrify just as profoundly as sights. Filmed in Toronto at the Rexdale home where director Ian Tuason grew up, Undertone follows Evy, portrayed by actress Nina Kiri, as she caretakes her mother in her final days of life.
Meanwhile, Evy and colleague Justin, who together host a paranormal investigation podcast, uncover a series of increasingly disturbing audio clips. Save for her character’s dying mother, played by Michele Duquet, Kiri is the only person we see: We hear other characters, but never see them.
The story is deeply personal for Tuason. He cared for both of his parents at the end of their lives in the same Rexdale home where Undertone was filmed. “I always considered my mother’s company as the safest place I could be, and when I saw her in this vulnerable, dependent condition at the end of life, my imagination took off,” Tuason says in the film’s press notes. After debuting to strong reviews and plenty of buzz last summer at Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, Undertone was scooped up by the prestigious production company A24 for worldwide distribution.
A key part of the film’s success is its sound design – which, thanks to A24’s support, was treated to a visceral Dolby Atmos surround-sound mix. From the beginning, Tuason envisioned Undertone as a story predominantly told via sound, rather than sight: “I knew the sound for this movie was going to do 80 per cent of the lifting in terms of the storytelling,” Tuason continues in the press notes. “My intention was to create a soundscape of increasing force and menace.”
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To help bring his terrifying, er, vision to life, Tuason worked with a small team of Canadian sound designers, mixing engineers and composers. David Gertsman, the film’s sound designer and a supervising sound editor at Les Studios Premium Sound in Montreal, explains that while big-budget productions routinely consider sound design from the earliest stages, independent pictures usually don’t have the time and financial resources to commit to that aspect of production. As an independent filmmaker, Tuason’s approach, in which he developed the auditory experience from the project’s first stages, was unique.
Gertsman’s company’s sound design includes foley art – the postproduction creation of sounds that occur in the film. These can be as simple as footsteps or typing on a keyboard, but in Undertone, the foley process was more involved. The gruesome sounds for a particularly disturbing sequence of offscreen violence, for example, were created not with one sample, but with many: a filled garbage bag hitting a car door, a fist pounding on a ventilation duct and blunt impact on the hood of a vehicle. Layering the sounds creates more weight and depth, making the them feel larger and more impactful.
During the early stages of the film, Evy and Justin, voiced by The White Lotus season two star Adam DiMarco, banter about one of the film’s key ideas: audio apophenia, or the tendency to perceive meaning or patterns in random sounds. In Undertone, the hosts hear disturbing messages in a recording of Baa, Baa, Black Sheep played backwards.
Here, audio apophenia is frightening because without seeing what’s happening in the audio clips, Tuason explains, “you, the listener, are creating the horror in your own mind.”
“A lot of the horrifying elements in the movie are intensified because you, as the viewer, are trying to create images of what Evy is listening to through her headphones,” he continues. “Sound without visuals creates a negative space that can be filled with one’s imagination or memories, sometimes unwanted. Either way, something is missing.”
Jon Lawless deteriorated the sound quality of certain recorded audio clips to give them a 'raw' feeling.Jon Lawless/Supplied
The movie hinges on a series of audio recordings featuring Mike and Jessa, a couple expecting their first child while experiencing demonic phenomena. Mix engineer Jon Lawless deteriorated the sound quality of recorded audio clips to give them a “raw” feeling; for some reason, in another instance of our brains filling in meaning, a lower-quality recording feels more creepy to our ears than a high-fidelity one. “It makes you feel like you’re listening to something that you shouldn’t,” says Lawless, who lives in Cobourg, Ont.
To achieve this downgraded feeling, Lawless deployed various plug-ins in Pro Tools, his digital audio workstation, which simulate responses from specific types of lo-fi speakers or recording devices. But he also relied on feeling, rather than logic or training, to guide him: At times while working on the mix for Undertone, Lawless would close his eyes to recentre his focus on his ears. “Sometimes, you’re just turning knobs until it feels right,” he grins.
“Sound is so subjective,” he continues. “It’s speakers that move air to replicate sounds. It can be so bizarre. As human beings, we have such a strong visual sense because it’s one of the things that has led us to survive, and it can definitely overpower the auditory.”
Violins featured heavily in Shanika Lewis-Waddell's score.Drew Barry/Supplied
Toronto musician and producer Shanika Lewis-Waddell, the film’s composer, used samples of sounds she’d collected to assemble the film’s score. Clips of violin figured heavily into the process. “Violin is one of those instruments that could be very tender and sweet, almost emulating a voice, and it could also be quite dark and eerie and uncertain,” says Lewis-Waddell. For scenes involving Evy and her mother – moments marked by strain and desire for an impossible resolution – Lewis-Waddell manipulated the sounds of violins.
When Evy is downstairs, recording her podcast, the score switches to low-frequency, droning, pulsing sounds, from instruments like synthesizers, heavily distorted guitars, a detuned autoharp and the sound of a violin bow on a cymbal. More often than not, the sounds are unrecognizable. “You can’t quite put your finger on it,” says Lewis-Waddell. “It was cool to play with that: What do you feel, rather than what you hear?”
Lewis-Waddell’s favourite moments in Undertone are when the sound feels subtle, almost unnoticeable. “It’s like, you don’t know what you’re feeling, but it’s happening,” she says. Even while working on the film, she had to take breaks from the intensity. “I definitely found myself getting a little shaken by some of the scenes,” she admits. “I think that’s a good sign.”