Undertone
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Ian Tuason
Screenplay by	Ian Tuason
Produced by	Dan Slater Cody Calahan
Starring	Nina Kiri Adam DiMarco
Cinematography	Graham Beasley
Edited by	Sonny Atkins
Music by	Shanika Lewis-Waddell
Production companies	Black Fawn Films Slaterverse Pictures Spooky Pictures DimensionGate KINO Studios Feel Everything
Distributed by	VVS Films
Release dates	July 27, 2025 (2025-07-27) (Fantasia) March 13, 2026 (2026-03-13) (United States)
Running time	94 minutes[1]
Country	Canada
Language	English
Budget	US$500,000[2]
Box office	$9.3 million[3]

Undertone (stylized in all lower case) is a 2025 Canadian horror film written and directed by Ian Tuason, in his directorial debut.^[4] The film stars Nina Kiri as Evy, a woman who hosts a paranormal podcast with her friend Justin (Adam DiMarco), where she is the skeptic to his believer. After Evy moves back home to become the caregiver to her dying mother (Michèle Duquet), she and Justin are sent recordings of a married couple (Keana Lyn Bastidas and Jeff Yung) experiencing paranormal noises in their home, drawing Evy into fear and paranoia.^[5]

Evy and her mother are the only characters to be shown on-screen in the film. All other characters are heard as off-screen voices, thus conveying the film's horror through its sound design.^[5]

Undertone had premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival on July 27, 2025, and was theatrically released in the United States by A24 on March 13, 2026, and by VVS Films in Canada. The film received generally positive reviews from critics.

Evangeline "Evy" Babig is a young woman with a Catholic upbringing, living alone with her comatose mother whom she cares for. She and her friend Justin run The Undertone, a horror podcast where they report on supernatural occurrences, which Evy dismisses as hoaxes while Justin fully believes they are real. One day, Justin is sent an anonymous email containing a seemingly random string of letters and ten audio files, which they play on the podcast.

The files were recorded by a couple named Mike and Jessa, the latter of whom talks in her sleep, which Mike hopes to capture evidence of. In the first recording, Jessa sings "London Bridge" in her sleep, which Justin then plays backwards and insists he can hear her saying "Mike, kill all." This inspires Evy to research hidden messages in children's songs; she becomes disturbed when she discovers that playing "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep", her favorite childhood song, in reverse reveals the message "lick the blood off".

Evy later discovers that she is six weeks pregnant by her boyfriend, Darren. At her mother's bedside, Evy informs her of the pregnancy, but then confesses that she feels unfit to be a mother. She later schedules an appointment at a local women's clinic. Playing additional recordings from Mike and Jessa reveal Jessa speaking what at first sounds like gibberish, but when played backwards reveals "come in, Abyzou." Through research, Evy and Justin learn that Abyzou is a demon in Mediterranean and European folklore who was said to cause miscarriages and drive mothers to murder their own children out of jealousy, as she herself was infertile. Evy notices increasingly strange phenomena around her, such as her still-unconscious mother moving on her own, lights flickering, and a statue of the Virgin Mary that Evy placed in the closet reappearing in other parts of the house.

In the final recording, Jessa insists she has to "warn" someone who is "listening", presumably referring to Evy. Justin attempts to respond to the sender, only for the email to be automatically sent back to him. A caller claiming to be Mike and Jessa's neighbor reveals that the couple was found dead in their home with plastic bags over their heads and crayon drawings of babies all over their walls; the autopsy revealed that Jessa was pregnant at her time of death. Another caller demands to speak to "Mary"—the name Evy previously said she had always wanted to give her hypothetical child—and does not relent when Justin insists there is nobody there by that name. A final caller named Abby begs for help in calming her incessantly crying child, ultimately murdering the infant despite Evy and Justin pleading with her not to. Evy then confesses that her mother has already died, which she feels she inadvertently caused by refusing to pray for her.

Evy rushes upstairs, her walls now covered in crayon drawings of Abyzou and dead, bloodied infants. She sees her mother standing in the bathroom, and the screen goes black as Evy is seemingly attacked by her mother while screaming for her to stop.

• Nina Kiri as Evy
• Adam DiMarco as the voice of Justin
• Michèle Duquet as Mama
• Keana Lyn Bastidas as the voice of Jessa
• Jeff Yung as the voice of Mike
• Sarah Beaudin as the voice of Abby
• Brian Quintero as the voice of Dr. Ram

The film was shot in February 2025 with production taking place in Rexdale, a neighbourhood in Toronto, Canada.^[6]

Undertone premiered at the 29th Fantasia International Film Festival on July 27, 2025,^[7] where it won the gold audience award for Canadian films.^[8] The film was also screened at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. In August 2025, A24 acquired worldwide distribution rights to the film in a seven-figure deal, and it was released on March 13, 2026, in the United States and Canada.^[9][10] Canadian distribution rights were acquired by VVS Films in January 2026.^[11] On March 9, 2026, Vertigo Releasing acquired the distribution rights for the United Kingdom and Ireland, and will release it in the country on April 10.^[12]

In the United States and Canada, Undertone was released alongside Reminders of Him, and was projected to gross around $7 million from 2,500 theaters in its opening weekend.^[13] The film made $4.3 million on its first day, including $1 million from Thursday box office previews.^[14]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 76% of 117 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Masterfully using negative space and unsettling audio to build its creeping dread, Undertone erupts as a diabolically immersive aural nightmare."^[15] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 66 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[16] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale, while 41% surveyed by PostTrak said they would definitely recommend it.^[14]

• Official website
• Undertone at IMDb