Isolation, desperation, and paranoia can make horror films special. In Hold Your Breath, we see all of these elements, and what’s more, we are blessed with Sarah Paulson waltzing back into the horror genre like she never left. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work. Juggling too many balls, the plot gets messy despite everyone’s best efforts to keep the audience guessing until the very end.
The setting of the film is certainly bleak enough. Set in Oklahoma in 1933 during severe and crushing dust storms, where living and surviving is a day-by-day ordeal, we follow the struggles of a mother and her two daughters. Margaret (Sarah Paulson), teenager Rose (Amiah Miller), and young Ollie (deaf actress Alona Jane Robbins) deal with the dust and its ramifications. They also await word from Margaret’s husband, who is off building bridges. To add to the stress, they struggle with the death of the third daughter, who passed away from sickness and lies buried nearby, a reminder of how cruel this environment and life can be.
Directors Karrie Crouse and William Joines take full advantage of this inhospitable setting to make the dust seem like a character in the film. Safety precautions, such as masks and tying off ropes as lifelines when out, are taken to show what has become a way of life. The dust gets into everything, onto everything, and Margaret is constantly cleaning and worrying, even trying to plug up every tiny hole to keep it out of the house. It proves pointless, though, as the dust continues to seep in, and the directors film it in various ways to enhance the paranoia that builds in Margaret daily. What’s more, the daughters begin reading a story about The Grey Man, an entity that seeps into your dreams like dust enters the house, causing you to do bad things.
The story hints at Margaret’s mental state and what happened after her daughter’s death. The premise seems set, but we get more: the story of a drifter/killer on the loose and a mysterious stranger’s appearance (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). Immediately, the kids think he’s The Grey Man, and the stress and paranoia they all lived with daily hit a whole new level.
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The whole idea of paranoia and fear hanging over the house and town like an unwanted friend is excellent fodder to build off of. However, the film struggles to keep the tension high. The stranger’s introduction sends everything off in different directions, making the film’s focus dubious.
Paulson, Miller, and Robbins are terrific at creating a family we can connect with and feel for, giving us different perspectives of their harsh lives. Paulson, in particular, is wonderful. She portrays the stress and paranoia on her face and sells so many scenes without saying a word, which makes everyone increasingly uncomfortable—her children and the audience alike.
The directors unleash sound, or lack thereof, to shock or jolt the audience and try to give a sense of their feelings, especially Margaret. It’s a useful tool, but it eventually becomes overused and loses its original impact. They drop enough hints for the audience to gauge where the story is going, but it takes a bit to get there, and the film stumbles along the way. The climax and end scenes are tough and thoughtful, making the future seem, at best, unclear.
While the actors do well with the material—welcome back, Sarah Paulson; we’ve missed you—in the end, the film can’t live up to the initial promise of this bleak and desolate life. Instead, it’s a somewhat frustrating experience and thoughts of what could have been.
Hold Your Breath had its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.
