How the fear of losing one's parents led to 'Undertone' horror movie

Caring for his two dying parents was \

Ian Tuason has always been good at terrifying people. As a child, neighbors on his Toronto street would ask his mom to stop letting him tell scary stories because their kids weren’t sleeping.

That knack hasn’t been lost as an adult – the Canadian director just added a new skill set, using immersive sound design to help create the found-audio horror movie “Undertone” (in theaters now). It's the freakiest film you’ll hear all year, but there was emotional hardship involved, too, as he wrote the movie during the “darkest time of my life” caregiving for two dying parents.

“It feels miraculous and feels like alchemy. I feel like I'm a mystic now,” Tuason says of the “healing” process of making “Undertone.” “Just be as honest as you can and magic happens.”

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The movie stars Nina Kiri as Evy Babic, the cohost of a popular paranormal podcast and recovering alcoholic who’s nursing a bad breakup and taking care of her comatose mother (Michele Duquet). Evy records her pod with remote cohost Justin (Adam DiMarco) in the middle of the night – she’s the skeptic, he’s the believer – and for their latest episode, they’re listening to 10 mysterious audio files emailed to them.