Undertone Ending Explained: What Happens to Evy and Justin?

The Ian Tuason directorial ‘Undertone’ charts an unnerving horror story, where a podcast host welcomes an unwanted presence into her life by trying to unravel a dreadful mystery. After Evy’s mother becomes bed-bound by a terminal illness, the daughter finds herself becoming her primary caretaker. In her situation, of helplessly confronting the reality of losing her mother at a snail’s pace, the only thing that helps her keep her head above water is the horror podcast the protagonist hosts with her friend, Justin.

However, this time around, the latter, connected to Evy via constant phone calls, brings a different case to the table. An anonymous sender has emailed them cryptic audio recordings of an expecting couple who seem to be haunted by an otherworldly spirit. Each night, the duo tunes in to record their episodes, listening to these audio files live. In the process, Evy begins to lose her grip on her own material reality, trapped in a house occupied by death and the dying. SPOILERS AHEAD!

Undertone Plot Synopsis

Evy grew up in a religious household, to the point where her bedroom in her mother’s house has a cross above the bed. Even so, she has never been a believer in anything spiritual. Thus, it’s no surprise that in her horror podcast with her friend Justin, she has settled into the role of the skeptic, constantly questioning and doubting the stories of hauntings and possessions that they delve into. Currently, the podcast host is at an unusual point in her life as her mother nears her inevitable death. The latter has gone more or less static, requiring her daughter to take on the role of a hospice caretaker. As such, her days are mostly spent alone, shut-in inside the house with her mother. In these moments, her and Justin’s podcast becomes her only source of respite.

As Evy sits down to record a new episode, her co-host presents her with an unexpected mystery: a chain of audio files sent to them by an anonymous source. Once they start listening to the files, they realize they’ve been recorded by an expecting couple, Mike and Jessa, as a way for the former to prove to his wife that she has been sleep-talking. Early evidence of the same includes her singing children’s nursery rhymes, namely “London Bridge is Falling Down.” This compels the duo to do a dive into such rhymes and their possible connection to the supernatural, a niche that ends up having some damning overlap.

Even though Evy remains skeptical of the eerie evidence that turns up, she’s also weirded out enough by it to take an early break from the recording. In the day or two that follows, she ends up discovering that she’s six weeks pregnant. However, she remains doubtful about whether or not she wants to keep the baby. Around the same time, she begins to notice some strange happenings unfolding around her mother, such as the elder woman falling off her bed or the inexplicable movements of an angel figurine. The next time she and Justin listen to the audio files, they discover that Jessa’s sleepwalking and talking had turned into her chanting incomprehensible recitations.

While on her own, Evy reverses the chant to unearth a strange saying, “Come in, Abyzou.” The next day, Justin brings up the same observation and tells her about Abyzou, the demon from European and Middle Eastern folklore. Meanwhile, the uncanny occurrences in Evy’s life continue to grow. Flickering lights, banging sounds, running water, the early signs of possession depicted in Jessa and Mike’s recordings all happen to the podcast host in real time. Nonetheless, she tries to hold onto her skepticism. Simultaneously, she also insists on finishing the recordings with Justin, even when the other finds himself too unsettled to continue. As the podcast host continues to look into Jessa and Mike’s recordings, a tragedy threatens to repeat itself this time with a different victim.

Undertone Ending: Do Evy and Justin Die? What Happens to Them?

Throughout the film, the pressure slowly but surely builds around Evy’s mother’s house with every audio recording that the former indulges in. The first time she mutters the demon’s name, reverberating Jessa’s chant of “Come in, Abyzou,” she’s plagued by alarming dreams of her mother reanimating from her near-camatose state. Afterward, strange happenings continue to surround her, either in connection with her mother or her unexpected pregnancy. She has visions of losing the baby that she already doubts she even wants. The fact that the demonic name connected to Jessa and Mike’s recordings centers around the bond between a mother and her child makes it impossible to overlook these instances as a series of coincidences. By the time she and Justin listen to the last audio file, their fates become irrevocably sealed.

The supernatural phenomena so far haunting Evy all conglomerate together to overturn her entire reality. The lights in her house go haywire, banging noises intensify, and worst of all, her mother springs back to mobility seemingly out of nowhere. However, as the story reaches its climax, the narrative opts for an ambiguous conclusion. Instead, it plunges the viewers into an audio-only experience, compelling them to fill in the blanks all on their own. The information we do get from the audio paints an ambiguous image. There’s a physical altercation, plenty of screaming, and one lone thud suggesting someone’s fall. As such, the story’s ending and Evy’s subsequent fate remain up for the viewers’ interpretation. Once the supernatural haunting that has been overtaking the house becomes an undeniable and tangible influence, the credibility of the audio files and the folklore becomes impossible to ignore.

If Abyzou has indeed wormed her way into Evy’s life, as she does to her other victims, it seems only logical for the latter to fall into the expected pattern and meet a similar end. The demon has historically been accused of causing miscarriages, stillbirths, and often even drives mothers to insanity and even homicide. Therefore, it’s entirely possible that the conclusion thud that is heard is Evy, and subsequently the fetus in her womb, falling to her death, caused by the supernatural entity. However, on the other hand, if viewers were to discard the supernatural element in the film, a different interpretation remains. Much of Evy’s narrative is metaphorically haunted by the guilt she feels as a daughter and its impact on her pregnancy.

On some level, Evy blames herself for her mother’s illness because she allowed her disbelief to prevent her from praying at the other’s bedside, even at her request. Furthermore, as her mother’s health deteriorates, pushing the duo into reversed roles as the caretaker and the caretaken, the daughter begins to realize the burden of the role. For the same reason, she remains conflicted about her ability to be a mother to the future child growing inside of her. However, her catholic upbringing possibly prevents her from seeking a straightforward solution like an abortion. In that case, the haunting experiences of Evy can be interpreted as a psychological breakdown, where she uses the idea of Abyzou to resolve the two complicated relationships in her life. As such, this time around, the thud becomes more ominous, suggesting a self-inflicted fall that still results in death but with a different implication. Crucially, Justin’s fate remains ambiguous in both interpretations since he is only ever present on the phone throughout this entire situation.

Who is Abby? Who is Haunting Evy?

One of the more confounding aspects of the film’s climax stems from a segment of Evy and Justin’s podcast that invites listeners to call in during the recording. The latter comes up with the idea in order to allow their audience to participate in their deep dive and possibly provide theories or other inputs of their own. During this time, they receive a strange call from a person named Abby. The listener is another mother who has just given birth to a baby. The stories about Abyzou seem to resonate with her for all the wrong reasons. Over the call, she has a breakdown, insisting that she isn’t a fit mother or a good person and that the only way she can save her baby is by killing it.

As things escalate, a frantic Evy tries to prevent Abby from making the worst mistake of her life by revealing the worst thing she herself has ever done. She confesses that she thinks her own negligence and stubborn lack of faith caused her mother’s death. This guilt that she has been carrying around informs a deep and dark part of her bubbling trauma. However, once Abby hears of it, she only responds by laughing maniacally. Although her character is never explained, this instance seems to make one obvious allusion: Abby is actually just Abyzou, who has reached out to the podcast hosts in this way to torment them and possibly finish infiltrating Evy’s life. The fact that the climactic supernatural spiral happens in the immediate aftermath of this mysterious call further supports this conclusion.

Is Evy’s Mother Moving Around? How?

Evy’s mother is introduced to the story as a woman on her deathbed. She stops eating, drinking, or even moving, leaving her daughter with no option but to count the days until she finally passes to the other side. In fact, this medical certainty of her immobility becomes a great source of dread throughout the film, as even mere suggestions of her presence in the background of a scene become enough to be bone-chilling. A nurse even explains to Evy that her mother will likely pass away with a death rattle, which will signify the last of her breath. In the end, the daughter isn’t around to witness this death rattle, but the audience certainly does. For the same reason, it becomes all the more confusing when the older woman begins moving again, confronting her daughter in the climax.

However, crucially, we never get to see the mother actually expressing her humanity, even in the climax. By then, she becomes a figure to be feared, who likely finds herself in a tussle with her daughter. The most logical explanation for this involves a posthumous demonic possession. By listening to the audio recordings, Evy inadvertently welcomes Abyzou’s presence in her life. Therefore, by the final stretch, the demon has enough of a grasp on her to fully infiltrate her house. Therefore, it’s likely that the demon inserts herself into Aby’s life through the corpse of her dead mother. Thus, the latter’s mobility is most likely a result of Abyzou possessing and overtaking her mortal form.

What Happened to Mike and Jessa?

Mike and Jessa occupy a unique role in the narrative. It’s their audio files that invite the malevolent spirit into Evy’s house and her life. Yet, the chopped-up nature of the files keeps their fates ambiguous until the very end. In the recordings, the couple’s lives progressively begin to get more and more haunted by Abyzou. Jessa’s pregnancy makes her a prime target for the baby-stealing demon as each night slowly drives her into an insanity of some kind. Yet, it isn’t until an outside source weighs in on the topic that the truth about what happened to her and her partner is revealed.

One of the callers who reaches out to the podcast claims to have been a neighbor of Jessa and Mike. He regales the story of how Jessa and Mike were ultimately found dead inside their houses. The couple both had plastic bags over their heads, and drawings of dead babies covered the walls in their house. From a skeptic’s point of view, this can be explained away as a number of mental health or psychosis related reasons that drove either Jessa or Mike, or both, to end their lives. However, once Abyzou’s presence becomes a tangible fact, it’s obvious that the demon has a direct hand in these deaths. The demon would have started haunting Jessa, the pregnant mother, before fully stepping into her life and destroying her and her family.