Nina Kiri carefully avoided a story that A24’s “Undertone” writer/director Ian Tuason wanted to tell her on set. It was his own personal experience with the supernatural in audio format that certainly had a lot to do with where the movie takes its haunting cues (literally).

In our exclusive interview with Kiri, Tuason, and co-star Adam DiMarco, the story was finally revealed to her now that she had some distance from the experience itself.

ABOUT ‘UNDERTONE’

“Undertone” shows Nina’s character Evy confronting her own self-described skepticism around the supernatural. This despite running a podcast with her lifelong friend Justin. The entirety of the film plays out with the camera lingering on Evy. She is mostly alone, in awkward frames in her dying mother’s house. We watch her slowly delve deeper into something deeply disturbing.

It begins with an email to the podcast that includes a series of mysterious audio attachments. We watch as Evy listens. The film is a kind of auditory answer to “Rear Window,” where horrors bloom in the audience’s mind out of what we partially hear, never see, and can only infer.

Tuason took his cues from many great directors, among them Hitchcock. But he gave special credit to Sam Esmail. He used many disconcertingly empty frames as a regular part of the “Mr. Robot” visual diet. There is a constant sense in “Undertone” that something is off, something is outside the frame, or just around it. Something lurks in every silent moment and hovers over the proceedings. Kiri did her best to block out anything extraneous during the filming, which is why she didn’t want to hear Tuason’s story until later on.

THE SUBTEXTUAL REASONS OF THE FILM

There are interesting subtextual reasons for the events of the film itself. But Tuason’s own lived-in experience with what he feels was supernatural, or simply hard to explain, shines a bright light on the film’s origins. His relationship to the unknown or the unexplained runs deep. His own refusal to know what it is or means translates well into “Undertone,” where we are given no clear answers.

Kiri and DiMarco layered the film with a well-established relationship. It shows audiences so much while telling us so little in explicit details. It’s a case study in how much can be done in the mind of the audience. With the performers and filmmakers leading them to conclusions. In an era of exposition due to ‘second screens,’ this film and its leads compel audiences to pick up details as they are slowly trickling out, which can be a strong recipe for horror and success.