Tina Kakadelis
Depression-era Oklahoma is a world that’s covered in dust. A person’s chance of survival depends fully on their ability to keep their home clean. Dust, however, has a way of finding its way through every crack and crevice. Homes are spread out across the prairie, completely disappearing when the wind kicks up the dust and creates an impenetrable whirlwind of dirt that makes it impossible to find a way to safety. This is the setting for Will Joines and Karrie Crouse’s Hold Your Breath. While not reinventing the genre of folk horror, Hold Your Breath is a solid entry into the field.
Margaret (Sarah Paulson) lives with her two daughters, Rose (Amiah Miller) and Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins). They’re struggling to make ends meet, even as the soil makes it difficult to grow any crops. Margaret’s husband went away to war, and it’s been months since she’s received a letter from him. In this isolation, Margaret grows increasingly unstable and is haunted by memories of her past. Her obsession with keeping the house clean is an endless fight against dirt that always finds a way inside. It’s within the dust that The Gray Man exists, an entity that haunts the prairie fields. Margaret is adamant that it’s just a story from her daughters’ book, but when a stranger (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) arrives on their doorstep, she begins to wonder if The Gray Man is real.
Hold Your Breath marks Paulson’s return to the horror genre. It was her frequent collaborations with Ryan Murphy that turned her into a household name. Paulson was a staple of Murphy’s American Horror Story series, and Hold Your Breath allows her to flex those spooky muscles once again. Perhaps Paulson simply feels most at home screaming at the top of her lungs and covered in blood. Given the way she leaps so fully into the character of Margaret, it’s easy to believe that. Paulson is the film’s guiding light and source of focus. Even when she’s at her most unreliable as a barometer for reality, Paulson’s Margaret is a commanding presence who reminds audiences why this genre was what made people start paying attention to her career.
It would be impossible to talk about Hold Your Breath without spending a moment on the dust, as it plays such an integral role in the film’s tension building. In fact, the movie was originally titled Dust. For those who haven’t spent time in the plains of the American West, it can be hard to comprehend the sheer vastness of the open prairie. It’s unfathomable for dust to essentially become a wall that cuts off a person’s vision of anything more than six inches in front of them, yet that was the reality. If you remove the supernatural elements of the film, Hold Your Breath still works as a historical family drama about the dust’s ability to isolate and create paranoia in those desperately trying to survive.
Perhaps it’s because there are so many avenues for the film to take, but Hold Your Breath at times feels as though it’s biting off more than it can chew. The ending is strong and brutal, but it feels right for the way the film naturally creates its tension. While the path to the finish may not be entirely smooth, the ending is a nice little unexpected gut punch. At times it feels as if Hold Your Breath was too worried about reveling in the silence of the wide open prairie, so jumpscares were added to make sure people were still invested. But with a powerhouse performer like Paulson, a creepy turn by Moss-Bachrach, and strong acting by the two young stars, Hold Your Breath was more than capable of living in the more subtle moments. That’s not to say that all the horror moments were unnecessary, but that it’s equally unsettling to watch a woman slowly but surely succumb to her own paranoia.
A certain nostalgia exists for the kind of horror movie that’s watched at sleepovers. The type that’s scary, but not too scary, and provides a foundation of sorts for new generations of horror movie lovers. Hold Your Breath is a perfect entry to the sleepover genre. It’s spookier than the offerings of some other streaming services (like the Netflix Fear Street trilogy), but likely won’t be responsible for any nightmares.
