Hold Your Breath Review: A Chilling Tale of Loss

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

As a reigning queen of scary television tales during her nine seasons on American Horror Story, Sarah Paulson returns in Hold Your Breath as Margaret Bellum, a mother of two—Rose (Amiah Miller) and  her deaf-mute younger sister Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins). Margaret is about to unwittingly embark on a life-changing journey following her husband Henry’s (Bill Heck) departure from their Oklahoma dust bowl farm to seek gainful employment in Philadelphia.  She has remained behind to tend the gravesite of her youngest daughter Ada who succumbed to scarlet fever. Margaret takes a daily pill to prevent her hallucinatory sleepwalking episodes.

Anxious Margaret hears about a drifter who broke into a neighbor’s home and killed every family member except the father and finds a strange man, Wallace Grady (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) hiding in her barn. Wallace, a preacher, is wearing Henry’s coat and tells Margaret that he met her husband at work and was asked to check on the Bellum family. Margaret asks him to leave, but after Wallace stops Rose’s nosebleed he is allowed to stay. Rose reads aloud to Margaret and Ollie a long-delayed letter from Henry relating how Wallace stole his coat and earning. This leads Margaret to insist, at gun point, that Wallace leave their house. Before going,  Wallace tells the Bellums that he will return one day as “The Grey Man,” a fictional character who killed his family but, after perishing in a dust storm, acquired supernatural powers to inhabit his victims’ bodies. With her anxiety further heightened, Margaret moves everyone into one room, locks all the doors, and stays inside their house. To stand round-the-clock guard, she stops taking her sleeping pills but begins sleepwalking again.

Margaret’s sister Esther Smith (Annaleigh Ashford) convinces her to take the daughters to a local dance. This social gathering becomes a sentinel moment for Margaret, as she suffers a major breakdown and frantically warns those in attendance about “The Grey Man.” Margaret’s downhill course accelerates, culminating in an unexpected ending, engineered by a terrified Rose who fears for her safety of herself and that of little Ollie.

Writer-director Karrie Krouse has given viewers a very disturbing tale of a woman whose psyche became permanently scarred by the loss of a child and who has become a virtual prisoner in a bleak environment where nothing grows and massive dust storms are a regular occurrence. Paulson dives deeply into Margaret’s core and delivers a tour-de-force performance as believable as it is frightening.  Amiah Miller’s Rose frantically tries to hold her family together as her mother’s mental state deteriorates and little Alona Jane Robbins is a deaf actress for whom signing comes as naturally as breathing. Bachrach’s portrayal of a clever con man is spot on and makes the audience believe that he could actually be the legendary Grey Man.  An added strength to this film is the stunning work turned in by the special and visual effects teams, led by Werner Hahnlein and Morgan Armstrong, respectively, particularly in the creation of frightening dust storms. Overall, this is a well-done film that frequently blurs the boundaries between reality and the supernatural. Hold Your Breath will become a highlight of this year’s Hallowe’en season and is highly recommended.

Hold Your Breath is streaming now on Hulu

• Rating Certificate: R (for some violence and disturbing images)
• Studios & Distributors: MAD DOG FILMS | Searchlight Pictures | Secret Engine | Hulu
• Directors: Karrie Krouse | William Joines
• Written By: Karrie Krouse
• Country: USA
• Language: English
• Run Time: 94 Mins.
• Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
• Street Date: 3 October 2024