A horror movie relies on sound

 Canadian director Ian Tuason makes his directorial debut with Undertone, a narrowly focused horror movie that concentrates on a podcaster who, with a partner, devotes her time to debunking paranormal claims. 

 Evy (Nina Kiri) spends most of the movie alone, preparing or recording her podcast while her mother (Michele Duquet) is dying in an upstairs bedroom. Evy has temporarily moved into her mother’s home for what amounts to a prolonged death watch.

  Evy’s podcast partner, Justin — a heard but not seen Adam DiMarco — believes that a series of disturbing recordings he has received might be authentic. Evy agrees to listen but plays her customary role as the pair's resident skeptic.

   Tuason's camera often isolates Evy in a darkened corner of a house that's filled with her mother’s Catholic paraphernalia — small statues of Mary, a picture of the Last Supper, crosses, and other cliches that usually turn up in films about possession.

    As the two partners listen to the audio files — 10 in all — tension mounts, and Tuason suggests a few psychological possibilities. Evy learns that she’s pregnant; she backslides on her sobriety, and she’s increasingly spooked by noises in the house. Lights  turn on and off by themselves. Faucets mysteriously begin running. Old stuff indeed, but wrapped in a minimalist package.

   The major question involves whether Evy is slipping into a state of psychological distortion or whether a demon — in this case, one responsible for mothers who kill their children — could have been summoned when the tapes were played. Eerie nursery rhymes -- Baa Baa Black Sheep, for example -- are repetitively employed.

    Tuason's audio-orientation relies on suggestive sound design, which includes snippets from the audio files that Justin receives. He sometimes plays them backward as he searches for hidden meanings.

     Films such as Undertone depend heavily on their finales. Tuason cloaks his with mostly darkened images and heightened sound, a maneuver suggested by preceding developments, but which seems too gimmicky to be entirely satisfying.

     Credit Kiri with holding the screen. And at its creepiest, Undertone casts a creepy spell. When it's all said and done, though, the movie doesn't dig deeply enough into what increasingly seems like an accumulation of familiar genre tropes.