From director/co-writer Karrie Crouse (a Westworld writer making her feature directing debut) and co-writer William Joines, Hold Your Breath is yet another story of a mother protecting her children from destructive, possibly supernatural, outside forces (much like the recent Never Let Go). But is the threat real or simply a product of seclusion and paranoia?
Sarah Paulson plays Margaret Bellum, living on a farm in 1930s Oklahoma where dust storms threaten families' lives and livelihoods, and her husband has gone away for reasons I’m not sure are ever truly explained. The frequent and unpredictable storms leave the Bellum family isolated for days at a time.
Margaret’s work is never done. She’s taking care of her two daughters, Rose (Amiah Miller) and Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins); a third daughter was killed in one of these dust storms, so Margaret is especially jittery about letting her children stray too far from home. She also seems to be constantly sweeping and wiping dust off every flat surface in their home. And Margaret doesn’t sleep well; when she does, she has terrible nightmares and a tendency to wander around the house or even outside. The daughters are keenly aware that something isn’t right with their mother. The older Rose reading Ollie a spooky story about a corruptive force known as the Gray Man isn’t helping things be less terrifying in the household, especially when rumors begin circulating in the community that a drifter has been spotted breaking into homes around town.
On the rare occasions when other people are introduced into the family’s life, things tend to get traumatic. Annaleigh Ashford plays Esther, a mother from a neighboring farm whose kids seem to be getting sicker from the dust in the air, and her condition isn’t much worse. There’s also a mysterious preacher (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) who appears in one of the film’s best sequences and claims to be able to heal people; he’s looking for a place to stay until the dust conditions improve, and the Bellums take him in for a time. I wish he had remained in the film longer since the explosive dynamic between him and Paulson is one of the movie’s most compelling elements.
But much like the aforementioned Never Let Go, there comes a point in Hold Your Breath in which even Margaret’s children begin to wonder if the scary shapes in the dust are real or if their mother is imagining them. And even if the scary stuff is just their mother’s sleep-deprived brain seeing things that aren’t there, does that mean things are any safer? Because it’s Paulson doing the heavy, sometimes thankless lifting here, it makes the overall production more interesting and tougher to predict, but it doesn’t make the movie any better in the end. Still, Hold Your Breath is blessedly short, with very little fat on the bones of this cough-inducing, dusty little psychological thriller that is a tasty morsel for Paulson to chew on, even if the film itself is fairly slight in terms of story and bigger metaphors about overly protective mothers. That being said, I think I’m done with this sub-genre for a spell.
The film is now streaming on Hulu.
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