Ian Tuason (dir. Undertone) on Meet Your Maker

On Horror Joy’s Meet Your Maker, Brian is joined by Undertone writer-director Ian Tuason. They discuss the relationship between joy and horror, distinguishing joy as a sustainable state from fleeting happiness and describing horror as a creative outlet that can offer safe thrills and catharsis, especially for people shaped by trauma.

Tuason recounts his path from writing poetry, stories, and short films to making a low-budget feature designed around sound, which he chose out of necessity and because audiences’ imaginations make the unseen scarier than visuals.

They discuss Undertone’s reliance on silence, noise-canceling headphones, and off-screen space, as well as its religious imagery rooted in Tuason’s Catholic upbringing, where guilt functions like an antagonist and Mary and Abzu represent opposing sides of a maternal archetype.

Tuason shares that he is rebooting Paranormal Activity, drawing on the first three films’ unseen terror while exploring the male gaze as a nemesis.