The first trailer for “Undertone” has surfaced, and it’s a quiet kind of horror, one that creeps under the skin rather than smashes it with shocks. Ian Tuason makes his feature debut with this supernatural thriller, a film that seems obsessed with sound, silence, and the way fear can echo in your own home.

Nina Kiri stars as Evy, the skeptical host of a paranormal podcast. She returns home to care for her terminally ill mother, expecting routines, obligations, familiar grief. Instead, she finds herself drawn into a series of mysterious recordings sent by a couple whose experiences with the unexplainable mirror and distort her own. Each tape unsettles, each voice becomes a thread pulling her toward something she cannot yet name, madness, or revelation.

Evy is the only presence on screen, but the world around her is voiced by Kris Holden-Ried, Michèle Duquet, Keana Lyn Bastidas, Sarah Beaudin, Seled Calderon, and Adam DiMarco. The isolation of a single visible figure against a chorus of disembodied voices amplifies the tension, turning the screen into something like a haunted confessional.

Shot in February 2025 in Rexdale, Toronto, “Undertone” premiered at the 29th Fantasia International Film Festival in July 2025, where it was awarded the Gold Audience Prize for Canadian films. A24 quickly snapped up worldwide distribution rights in a seven-figure deal, signaling the industry’s recognition of Tuason’s quiet mastery.

There is something insidious in movie’s narrative structure. Evy’s journey is one of sound as much as sight, a study of how stories, memories, and fear can be recorded, transmitted, and returned to their listener, warped but recognizable. The pregnant couple’s recordings echo against Evy’s own life, threading grief, skepticism, and obsession into a tapestry of psychological terror. The film doesn’t rely on spectacle alone; it thrives on anticipation, the feeling of being alone in a room full of unseen watchers.

In a debut, Tuason establishes an ear for subtle horror, a precision in pacing, and a fascination with the intersections of grief, technology, and the supernatural. “Undertone” is not just a thriller; it is more a meditation on listening, on the spaces between voice and reality, on how stories haunt the living as insistently as any ghost.

The film is set to hit U.S. and Canadian cinemas on March 13, 2026.