We Broke the Loop: Ian Tuason and Nina Kiri on “undertone”

Do we want the prayers of a faith we no longer trust in? How do we fight the demons of a faith we’ve left behind? These are the latent questions that soon take center stage for Evy (Nina Kiri), who is caring for her comatose mother (Michèle Duquet) in director Ian Tuason’s audio horror gem, “undertone.”

That Tuason filmed “undertone” in the same house where he cared for his own ailing parents adds more paranormal significance. One of the many bone-chilling terrors of director Ian Tuason’s film is the way it makes miracles perturbing. The hope is that, against the odds, Evy’s comatose mother arises from her slumber, but we’re also terrified at the possibility of her awakening. 

Tormented by guilt that she didn’t take her faith as seriously as her mother might have liked, to take her mind off things, Evy records a paranormal podcast with her friend, Justin (Kris Holden-Ried). Fittingly, she acts as the in-house skeptic in contrast to Justin, who pokes fun at her doubt and invites her to consider how the divine might manifest in something as innocuous as an MP3 file. When Justin plays a series of ten recordings for them to listen to, Evy begins to doubt her own doubts, each recording frighteningly echoing something Evy is experiencing in her own life. 

That “undertone” manages to feel grand in scope despite featuring only two on-screen actors is a testament to the film’s craftsmanship. Tuason wrote every audio cue in the script, which means that every loud bang, creaky door, or flickering light has been meticulously choreographed. Despite the film’s horrors, there’s a sentiment of reverence and love at its core: in the film’s closing moments, Tuason thanks his parents, writing:

“.. to Mom and Dad from March 2021 to October 2023, when their bodies and minds slowly surrendered to the world, to each other, and to Love itself, and in those thirty months, I learned everything I know now about peace, happiness, wisdom, service, courage and existence – truths I didn’t even know I was oblivious to in all my years before. So I simplify my dedication to Mom and Dad for transforming my faith into the knowledge of God.” 

After kindly expressing adulation for RogerEbert.com’s coverage of his film, Tuason and Kiri went on a deep dive into the film’s spiritual wavelength, learning to communicate a depth of relationship through just dialogue, and making peace with the reality that we’ll always care for our loved ones imperfectly, and 

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

In the film’s opening moments, the Bible passage Evy’s mother has left open is the verse where Jesus raises a girl from the dead. Before that story, Jesus healed an aging woman and cast out demons into a herd of pigs. All very on point for “undertone,” but I’m curious if opening the film on that verse was intentional? 

Ian Tuason: (Laughs) Well, the Holy Spirit chose that because we randomly picked a page, and when we saw the word “child,” we thought, “Okay, let’s put her mother’s glasses on that word.” But then, now that you have mentioned it, I’m going to have to read that passage in its entirety. A demon is mentioned there, Abyzou’s a demon … it’s almost serendipitous. 

That’s a common practice for me, though, where I’ll flip to a verse at random and see what it might say. 

IA: It speaks directly to you, right? Are you a Christian? 

I do come from a faith background, yes. 

IA: Have you ever intentionally gone into the Bible to pick a verse as a form of divinity, kind of like tarot card reading? 

I personally have not, but I have friends who’ve done something similar. Was that part of your preparation for the role, Nina? 

Nina Kiri: (Laughs) No, but he gave me The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran, which I really enjoyed reading. 

IA: Remember, I also gave you that book. Well, I didn’t give it to you, but I showed you that book by Rick Rubin? I made everyone randomly choose a page and a paragraph.

NK: Oh yeah! I don’t remember my paragraph. 

IA: Yours was pretty significant. It was one of the ones that surprised all of us the most. Man, I wish I remembered. I do remember, Graham Beasley, our director of Photography, picked a paragraph that–I’m paraphrasing–“If your gut feeling says ‘Don’t execute.’ Then do it over and do everything again.’” 

Even in pre-production, it seems that you all were mindful of the spiritual “undertone” that taps into a very particular grief: that of a parent either unsure of their child’s salvation or concerned that their child may not go to Heaven. Evy feels guilty about not taking her faith seriously while her mom was alive. Ian, I’m wondering what draws you to depicting that type of grief on-screen, and what it was like to invite someone like Nina into something so specific. 

IA: You’ve made a point that I didn’t realize until now: that Momma wasn’t sure of her child’s salvation. It’s almost as if Momma was trying to save Evy. There’s that voice message that Evy keeps listening to, and I put it in there because I wanted to show why Evy feels guilty, and how Momma is almost guilt-tripping Evy for not going to church. I’m writing the sequels now, and the third film is about Momma and explores her goal of saving Evy’s soul. 

NK: When I was a kid, I used to ask all the time, “Am I being good? Is what I’m doing good?” I was so obsessed with being good, and my parents aren’t religious at all, and yet that moral feeling was relatable. If they were religious, I think, similar to Evy, I’d ask myself, “Did I do enough?” 

So the way I related to Evy wasn’t necessarily through the spiritual aspect, but through a desire to be good in various situations in life. Did I do this right? Did I treat this person the right way? Am I being a good person at all times? When you’re younger, you need your parents’ guidance, and I would constantly ask myself those questions. Evy is a character who’s rattled with guilt, and she’s asking herself: “Could I have been better towards my faith? Should I have taken better care of Momma?” That guilt is easy for me to access because at so many points in life I felt I wasn’t as good as I should have been, and I could have been better, even when I was just doing what I could. 

IA: Did you ever find a way to resolve those feelings? Because I still catch myself wrestling. 

NK: I still wrestle a lot, in particular with relationships with my family and my parents. If I don’t call enough, I think “I should have called more,” or “I should call them again or I shouldn’t have been mad at that time.” Sometimes you can go away to repair a relationship, but there’s a struggle with maintaining peace; for me, I’m always like “No, nothing can be bad. I can’t do anything that’s not positive, and that’s a weird feeling, I think to have so often.” 

I’m thinking of when Evy says, “I just want it to be over,” saying the quiet part out loud that she hopes for her mother to pass. Speaking of emotions that may be vocalized or not, I’m struck by the dynamic between Evy and Justin, and we only get a bit of their non-podcast-related banter, but I couldn’t help but speculate if there was a romantic attraction. 

IA: I didn’t write that into the script, but then when Nina, Adam, and I were workshopping, we discussed a what-if scenario where there was an unrequited romance back in college. Adam played it that way, and you can hear it in his tenderness. You can also hear in Nina that she’s the one who may have rejected him because she’s the one calling the shots in their relationship. That’s something I’m playing with exploring in sequels. I think their relationship exists on its own to show how much Justin cares about Nina. 

NK: There is no explicit conversation about their relationship. It is realistic to me that someone you went to college with who liked you, maybe it’s wrong timing, but you still stay in touch, and you know they care for you, you care for them, and there’s never any pressure or weirdness. It’s just love, because you’ve known a person for so long. I’m happy that Evy and Justin’s relationship is being perceived a certain way because, for both of them, it’s necessary. He’s genuinely trying to help her and isn’t going to let her go. 

When he learns that Evy’s boyfriend, Darren, hasn’t been around much to help, I love his instinctive response of “What’s his number? I’m going to call and text him right now.” It’s those little touches that communicate so much depth. 

IA: That’s one line I did write in, but when I wrote it, I figured he was just a good friend who’s on his friend’s side. The friend is always on the friend’s side against the friend’s significant other. But it gives him more motivation now that Adam and Nina have agreed on this backstory of unrequited love for their characters. 

Ian, I understand you worked with Production Designer Mercedes Coyle to transform your parents’ home into a film set. I’m curious what the process was like to invite outside collaborators into such a personal space, but then also invite your family–your nephew drew the haunting pictures we see at the film’s climax–into the film work you do? 

IA: Right now, you’re channeling my favorite interviewer, Nardwuar. He’s known for his research, but it was to a point where it would creep out his interviewees. You’re not as extreme as him because then you would have known my first-grade teacher’s name … 

(Laughs) That was my follow-up question, actually. I do know one reason why Nina was due to another serendipitous moment: when you brought your mom to the hospital, she was wearing just one piece of jewelry, a pinky ring. Then, when you first met Nina, she was wearing just a pinky ring. 

NK: Well, guess what happened last night? The pinky ring broke. 

IA: We broke the loop. Now we’re entering another chapter. To answer your question, someone asked me at a Q&A how I felt about still living in the house. I was the one who answered about how my relationship with my house went through so many different phases. Right now, it’s just a new phase. It doesn’t mean “undertone” house. It means so many other things. Nina’s holding room was my childhood bedroom. Although we don’t see Justin on-screen, Adam was in my high school bedroom. I’ve had different memories for different rooms. I see Justin’s character as the college version of me; I was just in that room all the time. Then, where Nina was in my childhood bedroom, that’s where I was daydreaming, playing, and writing. 

Was your nephew informed that his pictures would be used in such a scary film? 

IA: I was going to use his actual drawings, but a higher power prevented that. We had a props meeting a day before shooting. I had put all of his drawings in a box. I placed it somewhere in the basement where I knew I could find it. So five minutes before our props meeting, I went down to get it, and I couldn’t find it. So I was searching for about a good ten minutes, and then I went back upstairs, and I said, “I can’t find it. Forget it. Just you guys can do your suggestion of getting another kid to draw it.” 

After that meeting, I went downstairs and found it in the same spot where I had originally left it. I took that as a sign that my mom didn’t want to use her gifts from her grandchildren as props in a horror movie. 

NK: Zach, it seems that you’ve had your own fights with demons. 

(Laughs) My grandma is a prayer warrior, and I know that she prays so much for my younger brother and me. My father has said that when she passes, I’m losing someone who is praying for me. Your film made me wonder what she might be holding back due to her prayers. 

IA: I would take that literally because my life went downhill when my mom passed, and she’s the one who prayed for me hard every single day. My life and my brother’s life started spiraling. 

NK: A mother’s love … you were once in her body, and the bond between mother and child is flesh and flesh. You were her. It’s such an intense relationship in our lives, whether you look at it through a religious lens or not. Sometimes I feel like moms love us so much we almost can’t handle it. There’s something we feel overwhelmed by, because how could we not? 

“undertone” opens in theaters on March 13th from A24.

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