Undertone (2025)

Only two faces show up on screen in Undertone, and one of them belongs to a woman in a coma. Everyone else is a voice on a recording or a phone line, a brilliant trick or a cheap one, depending on how you feel about staring at a computer screen. The scares are secondhand. A nursery rhyme played backwards, a demon pulled out of old folklore, a Virgin Mary statue that keeps wandering out of the closet: you’ve seen every one of these tricks before, and the ending gets so frantic it stops making sense. Still, Ian Tuason knows exactly what silence does to a nervous brain. Nina Kiri carries the whole thing alone as a worn-out caregiver playing the skeptic on the paranormal podcast she co-hosts while her nerves fray. Critics gave it 74% on Rotten Tomatoes, audiences gave it a C CinemaScore, and both have a point. A 6.3 because the sound is genuinely frightening and the story never surprises you. $147.42 says you catch yourself humming a nursery rhyme tomorrow and stop cold before the second verse.

What works: The sound design does most of the work, and keeping every other character off screen makes your imagination fill in the dark. Nina Kiri holds the camera alone and never lets the tension drop.

What doesn’t: The ingredients are borrowed from a dozen older horror films, and the ending gets so chaotic it muddles the rules the first hour carefully built.

Who it’s for: Podcast junkies and horror fans who would rather hear the monster than see it, ideally through good headphones in a dark room.