Hold Your Breath Review – Old and Dusty

Hold Your Breath fits comfortably into a mess of recent horror films. It’s about the difficulties of motherhood and the perils of trauma. The themes and scares are equally well-worn. The most interesting thing about it is the Dust Bowl setting, which adds a dash of natural terror. As is often the case, a memorable lead performance by Sarah Paulson isn’t enough to cut through the cloud of Fall horror releases.

Hold Your Breath is the feature directorial debut of Karrie Crouse and William Joines. Crouse has a few episodes of Westworld under her belt, but their other most notable titles are as a duo. They created short films and music videos before their feature debut. Crouse wrote the pitch in 2020, but shooting didn’t start until 2022. Finally, the film showed at TIFF in September.

Coughing and Screaming

Yes, Hold Your Breath once went by the title Dust. Frankly, I strongly believe it should have kept that name, but a cursory search tells me there’s only one other notable movie called Hold Your Breath and at least two Dusts. Crouse and Joines’ debut follows the Bellum family through their grim days in 1930s Oklahoma. Sarah Paulson’s Margaret struggles to raise her two daughters after her husband left home with questionable reasons. Rampant dust storms have taken everything from everyone, leaving the Bellum family sick, hungry, and desperate. Elder daughter Rose tells her sister Ollie the tale of the “Gray Man,” a shapeshifting demon from the dust. Rose and Ollie’s growing paranoia heightens when a stranger enters their life with promises of help from above. Add Margaret’s increasingly erratic behavior to the mix, and the project offers a brutal look at miserable circumstances.

The two draws of Hold Your Breath are the family drama and the psychological horror. The film is rather blandly fine at both. Its most tried-and-true horror trick is a jump scare with an immediate backtrack. Someone sees something scary, then the loud noise plays, and the next cut undoes the initial threat. It becomes impossible to trust anything, which feels only partially intentional. There are a few quieter, subtler horror moments that stand out. I won’t spoil my favorite moment, but it’s a shockingly effective use of blood in a movie that doesn’t spill much. Sarah Paulson is the sharpest tool in the film’s arsenal. She’s not quite doing Nurse Ratched again, but she’s not as far removed as one might expect. Her performance lifts the film’s least interesting moments, but it’s not enough to escape the low moments.

Fear on the Farm

The thing Hold Your Breath does best is not the thing it wants to focus on. There’s this clever core of life in a dying community that just never quite gets enough attention. Annaleigh Ashford appears as a mother in Margaret’s community. She and the rest of the town remain background players that could have enjoyed a little more prominence. The centerpiece is Margaret and her kids, but the theme of public perception remains engaging. Margaret’s assertions that “people will talk” are occasionally more terrifying than the Gray Man. It’s almost Southern Gothic, though Oklahoma is more South Central. I wish the film had delved deeper into her relationship with the town and the ways in which her desire to look normal defeated her desire to do the right thing. As it stands, it’s a disappointingly quiet background element.

I must admit I was distracted through a lot of Hold Your Breath because I could not stop thinking about Never Let Go. Alexandre Aja’s recent horror film is one location-swap away from this new Hulu release. Counting the film’s TIFF release date, the two projects released only four days apart. They have an almost absurd amount in common. Their tone, writing, presentation, and even their scares feel eerily similar. It’s not fair to call one in any way derivative of the others. It reminds me most immediately of the 2014 release of As Above, So Below and The Pyramid. Except, in this case, one of the films isn’t drastically better than the other. Instead, they both reach the same level of blandly competent quality. Either one’s worth a watch for horror newcomers or fans of jump scares, but only one dropped straight to streaming.

Hold Your Breath has a few good central ideas and one solid central performance. It’s not enough to become anything transcendent, but it’s enough to justify a lazy evening screening via Hulu. The film’s brevity is a blessing and a curse. Hold Your Breath won’t exactly take your breath away, but there could be worse movies about dust.