“Undertone” is all tone, and little else. Such as the classic phrase goes its “all hat and no cattle”. Uniquely, it is a film that depended on the notion of summoning a demon through sound got the visual right, but not much else. Even though sound and sound mixing was fair it wasn’t the star of the film- as it should have been. The camera angles were perfect. Ideal to maintain an unsettling environment that the audience would be held in constant suspense. The pans and tilts agree with me. All lens placement was excellent for a fantastic psychological thriller, but much of that wasted for nothing to occur. Nothing happens. 

Again, It does well with the feel of it, the mood is stellar and the aesthetics are there. The motivations are not. There were just too many opportunities missed for a great horror. “Undertone” had the right pitch but didn’t deliver.

Less is more is a great philosophy when worked right. Choosing the audience to let their minds fill in what is not being seen, but when you have nothing and subtract from that it works against you. Show us! For love of fudge, show us the horror! Not doing so lends to being too cute or cafe with the work. Don’t hide it! Show us! Especially with a script as lean as this. The film length is stretched as far as it could with such little story we have. There’s a pregnancy subplot inserted in this that feels like it just was paperclipped added into the story. The main villain seems like it was merely lifted from a simple google search. And with all that The main problem with this film is with such a limited cast where more actors are doing voice overs, is that there is more concern about what is occurring then concern for any character in this. The story does not rise above from its kernels of an idea of a story. It was never developed. Things were  just chopped and things added.

Undertone was underwhelming. At times it did feel like a film school work. The third act is highly telegraphed and cheap. All things you don’t want in your psychological thriller. There is a great horror somewhere in it. It got the pitch right but it just did not deliver. 6/10