Brenda's Review of Undertone 2026 *Spoilers*

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning, this is Brenda and I'm back with another horror movie review. I thought my buddy Stacy was gonna be here with me. She was in the room while we watched Undertone together, but she doesn't seem to remember anything about the movie, so she didn't partake in this little review. I think she was either on her phone too much or thought we were gonna be recording an episode of Let's Wine, so she got in the wine. Undertone recently dropped on HBO Max, and that's where we watched it. I know the movie came out in 2025, if you look it up, but it wasn't released in the US in theaters until 2026. I wanted to like this movie so much and was looking so forward to it, but I don't feel that I got everything out of it that other people were because some of the reviews on this movie are really good. We have Evie and Justin, that are podcasters. They have a paranormal podcast called The Undertone. Evie is staying at her mother's house and her mother is in the final stages of dying and she's taking care of her. They make it sound like Justin lives overseas and hasn't seen Evie in quite a long time in person, but they've stayed in touch by having this podcast together. I've heard that Ian Twassen, who wrote and directed the movie, was actually taking care of his parents when he wrote this, so I'm sure it kind of hit close to home. I took care of my mother when she battled Alzheimer's, and it is hard, and maybe that's why I didn't like this movie so much. Maybe there's some trauma going on from it, I'm not sure. Evie is our skeptic, and Justin is the one who wants to believe everything. He is the one who received an email with 10 audio recordings. Justin says he hasn't listened to the audio recordings and was saving them for the podcast for them to listen to together. I find the house that Evie is staying in to be very depressing looking. It's not even what I would call eerie. The mom is Catholic and has all her little Catholic icons all over the house, and there is a little Mary statue that moves about the home as they start listening to these recordings. I think Evie is wanting out of the caregiving role. She feels guilty over that too. She obviously loves her mom or she wouldn't be there, but she is also conflicted because I don't find her to be a religious person. At the beginning, there is a voicemail that we hear where Evie's mother is asking her if she's coming to church. Evie just seems very detached of religion, and I'm sure her mother was very hurt over that. When Justin and Evie start listening to the files that they were sent, we meet Mike and Jessa. And we learn that Jess is expecting a baby, and Mike has been recording her at night. He wanted to prove to her that she's been talking in her sleep. Now this Jessa is pregnant, and Evie may be pregnant also. We see her getting sick and she's not feeling well. As they start listening to the recordings, more and more things start to happen around the house. And also Evie's mom is on her deathbed. She can't move, she can't talk or communicate. So as things start to happen, if you keep checking the background, you'll see some things moving around and also look in the mirrors. There's talk of children's songs like London Bridge, Rockabi Baby, Baba Black Sheep. Some of these things are played in reverse. What they're really doing is summoning a demon. You can hear Jessa saying, come in abazoo. So when Evie finally plays the cursed file in reverse, that's when she summons the demon. They had a caller that called in that claimed to be Mike and Jessa's neighbor, and Mike and Jessa were found dead with bags over their heads and there were crayon drawings all over the walls. Evie had been drawing crayon pictures and it's eventually showed that those drawings are all over the house. I don't really like that the ending of this movie left me hanging. The final scene is Evie running up the stairs. Screen goes black, you hear a bit of a struggle. Sounded like somebody fell down the stairs. I don't know. I feel bad for not liking this movie as much as I feel that I should have. Eerie? I wouldn't even say it was really that eerie, but I'd still give it a glass of wine because it is dark. The environment, it's basically old lady house. I can't give it anything for that. Evil, Abizo, he's a motherfucker, so we'll give him two glasses of wine, so we will say it's evil. I mean, who doesn't have empathy for a pregnant person? So we'll give that one a glass of wine. I did make it to the end. I wouldn't say it's overly entertaining. It just kept my attention enough to make it to the end. So that means we are up to four wine glasses. How did that happen? I need to quit making shit up so these reviews are more realistic. I am a huge fan of the Evil Dead franchise. So next week I'm going to go see Evil Dead Burn, and the next review will be on that. So until next time.