Movie Review: HOLD YOUR BREATH

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: October 4th, 2024 / 08:35 AM

HOLD YOUR BREATH | ©2024 Searchlight Pictures

Rating: R
Stars: Sarah Paulson, Amiah Miller, Annaleigh Ashford, Alona James Robbins, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Frances Lee McCain, Courtney Cunningham
Writer: Karrie Crouse
Directors: Karrie Crouse & Will Joines
Distributor: Searchlight Pictures
Release Date: October 3, 2024 (Hulu)

HOLD YOUR BREATH is set in the Oklahoma Panhandle in 1933, when blinding, catastrophic dust storms were ravaging the American Midwest.

Directors Karrie Crouse & Will Joines, working from Crouse’s script, give us an environment as ominous as the deep ocean, and use it to set a horror story that can be read as supernatural, psychological, or both.

Wheat farmer Margaret Bellum (Sarah Paulson) is trying to maintain some quality of life on the family homestead, while husband Henry is away doing lucrative construction work.

Also present are preteen eldest daughter Rose (Amiah Miller) and little Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins), who is deaf. Another young daughter, Ada, died of scarlet fever, and Margaret is still having a hard time coming to terms with the loss.

Margaret’s sister Esther (Annaleigh Ashford), who lives just down the road, is having an even worse time coping. She has two boys of her own, the younger one so sick from the dust that he has to wear a plaster mask most of the time.

Rose, perhaps unwisely, reads Ollie a scary folktale about the Grey Man, who murdered his wife and children, was burned alive in the aftermath, and turned to malevolent ash. Now the Grey Man can come through walls. He can be breathed in and make a person do terrible things.

At first, of course, Margaret thinks this is just a story. But then there are sewing circle rumors of a neighbor who blamed a drifter for the murder of his whole family. The gossip is that the neighbor may have committed the crime himself after being possessed by the Grey Man.

And preacher Wallace (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) turns up with a letter from Henry, and the ability to cure Rose’s nosebleeds through the laying on of hands.

The HOLD YOUR BREATH filmmakers and cast keep us wondering throughout what may be supernatural and what may be mental deterioration brought on by stress. The scenes between Paulson and Ashford as sisters, trading between who is steady and who is weakening, are especially engrossing.

Rose is our main compass point for reliable reality, and Miller is compelling in the role. Young Robbins is wholly convincing as Ollie, and Moss-Bachrach has the right kind of ambiguity as the wandering preacher.

But there are aspects of HOLD YOUR BREATH that don’t fulfill the movie’s potential. While the dust storms are marvelously executed from a technical point of view, we never fear (as we logically should) what may be lurking just out of sight, hidden by the maelstrom.

Even more problematic, while HOLD YOUR BREATH, spurs our curiosity all the way through, we’re kept at a bit of a remove. Yes, the characters’ hardscrabble lives don’t leave a lot of time for quirks, but somehow there’s a generic sheen over the community. Aside from Wallace, who has quite the back story, no one is especially memorable in their actions or reactions.

The upshot is that we want to know what’s going to happen, but the film never has us (pardon the expression) holding our breath to find out.

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