Reel & Make Believe | Undertone & The Mortuary Assistant (spoiler free)

I’ve taken a long, long break from being so active in the movie theater to in an effort to heal my chronic illness in the midst of just as chronic work and school stressors. But BABIES I’M BACK and it feels so good.

Alright, dim the lights, light a candle that smells vaguely of regret and vanilla, and let’s talk about the chaotic little double feature I have in store for you.

First up: Undertone

This movie walked into my brain, settled in comfortably and whispered something chilling from the hallway… and I enjoyed every second of it.

If you know me, then you know I’m a sucker for a small cast and a claustrophobic setting. Give me a handful of people, one location, and a creeping sense of “something is not right here but what tf is it,” and I’m locked in like a final girl with a dead phone battery. Undertone delivers exactly that, but what really got its claws into me was the sound design. Not just background noise, but weaponized audio. The kind that makes you question whether the creak you just heard came from the movie… or your own house. Delicious.

Now, I’ll be honest: I usually get a little twitchy when a horror movie plays the “is it demons/possession or is it trauma?” game. Pick a lane, babe. But Undertone gets a full pass from me because when the reveal starts to bloom, we’re not dealing with your standard-issue demon bro. No no. This movie flipped that on its head and  I was sat, invested, and taking notes. It felt fresh in a genre that tends to just put a different hat on the same evil guy.

Also, I cannot ignore my bias here. As a former horror podcaster (RIP to our late-night overanalyzing and unhinged hot takes), this movie felt like it knew how horror fans listen. It understands tension as something you hear before you see. It’s intimate. It’s eerie. It’s the cinematic equivalent of someone breathing too close to your ear.

Verdict: Obsessed. Haunted. Would absolutely spiral about this with friends for two hours.

And then… The Mortuary Assistant

Sigh. I went in ready. I was open. I was willing to be embalmed emotionally. And instead, I got… absolutely nothing.

Now, I’ve never played the game it’s based on, and I didn’t think that would matter. I’ve never played Resident Evil but still love the movies.  This is one of those adaptations that seems to assume you already did your homework. There’s lore lurking in the corners, but if you’re not already in on the secret, it just kind of sits there like an uninvited ghost refusing to introduce itself.

And the acting… I hate to say it, but it’s giving “reading stage directions out loud.” I was genuinely excited to see Willa Holland but that excitement evaporated faster than formaldehyde fumes. Both leads delivered their lines with the emotional range of a damp paper towel. In a movie whose premise begs for tension, dread, and rising panic, we instead got monotone conversations in dim lighting. Not even the mortuary setting could save it, and that’s saying something because that setting is basically horror on easy mode.

It also reeks of franchise bait. You can feel it laying groundwork, stretching threads, whispering “this will make more sense later…” and it kind of did, but lore dumps were incredibly rushed and lacking in passion. Maybe the casual horror fan and an unknown to the game would really like this, but I will politely put this in the “one and done” pile.

Verdict: Flatlined. Respectfully, I will not be clocking back in for the sequel (if there is one). Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go sit in silence and question every sound my apartment makes tonight.

Stef Nuñez (she/they) is Co-Editor-In-Chief of Sage Cigarettes Magazine as well as (former) unhinged co-host of A Ghost in the Magazine & The Annegirls Podcast. She is a feral horror mami and artist who specializes in tiny and/or strange pieces. When she’s not working her fashion job or posting here, you can find her haunting the stretch of road between North Carolina and Virginia in hopes of becoming a legendary cryptid.