FP
Poster for Undertone50Poster © Black Fawn Films, Slaterverse Pictures, Spooky Pictures · 320×463, fair use, to show which film it is. Why.

50 they argued 3 critics · 30 to 74

Undertone

Read by Marlow, First Reader · what that means · what he keeps

How they landed
they argued3 critics, 30 to 74
The kindest
While it may trade in somewhat unoriginal genre tropes — the haunted house, the evil demons, the creepy children's songs, the jump scares — its form and its function feel fresh, fluent and flippin' frightening.John Nugent, Empire · we gave it 74
The harshest
Undertone makes one yearn for an official moratorium on its many reappropriated tropes, so that aspiring horror directors might finally be once again inspired to find new scary stories to tell in novel ways.Richard Lawson, The Hollywood Reporter · we gave it 30
Film
Ian Tuason · 2025 · Canada

The guide3 of 7 came up

very mild · mild · moderate · strong · very strong — the board’s own five words, in its own order
Violence
Sex and nudity
Swearing
Drink and drugs
Upsetting
Offensive
Hard to sit through

Certificate reasons from the British Board of Film Classification, classified 02/04/2026. Their words: Strong horror, violence, language. We could not read the certificate itself off their page, so we do not print one.

All 3 reviews

While it may trade in somewhat unoriginal genre tropes — the haunted house, the evil demons, the creepy children's songs, the jump scares — its form and its function feel fresh, fluent and flippin' frightening. At the very least, it is a deeply unsettling sensory experience.

John Nugent, Empire · quoted in Wikipedia, original not read by us · FP000114
74we gave it

Has elements of Paranormal Activity, Session 9, Hereditary, The Ring, The Blair Witch Project and The Exorcist, enough sighs of familiarity to give horror fans a scary case of deja vu. It's not that total originality is expected at this particular moment... but given the genre's overcrowd, it's hard to see what pushes Undertone above the noise.

Benjamin Lee, The Guardian · quoted in Wikipedia, original not read by us · FP000115
45we gave it

Undertone makes one yearn for an official moratorium on its many reappropriated tropes, so that aspiring horror directors might finally be once again inspired to find new scary stories to tell in novel ways.

Richard Lawson, The Hollywood Reporter · quoted in Wikipedia, original not read by us · FP000116
30we gave it

Who wrote about this filmgo read them

John NugentEmpireWhere we read it
Benjamin LeeThe GuardianWhere we read it
Richard LawsonThe Hollywood ReporterWhere we read it

What the readers worked outwe link the room and never a person in it · nothing here moves the score

r/horror, an argument about one camera moveReddit

Our three critics disagreed about whether the film is derivative. This room disagrees about something far more useful: whether repeating a slow pan across the same room builds tension or spends it. One side describes sustained dread and names the films it descends from; the other describes an expectation subverted so often that it stops being an expectation. Both are talking about the same shot and both are precise about it.

Go and read it

Carry thisdrop it into any page · nothing to sign, nothing to pay

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Referencesa number is issued once and never reused

  1. FP000114John Nugent. Empire. Undertone (2025). Quoted in Wikipedia, Undertone (film). Read 2026-08-20. We scored it 74.Source
  2. FP000115Benjamin Lee. The Guardian. Undertone (2025). Quoted in Wikipedia, Undertone (film). Read 2026-08-20. We scored it 45.Source
  3. FP000116Richard Lawson. The Hollywood Reporter. Undertone (2025). Quoted in Wikipedia, Undertone (film). Read 2026-08-20. We scored it 30.Source