Maybe it's just me, but it feels like COVID is everywhere in 2024's horror output. Yes, stories of isolation have long been a part of the genre, but since 2020 forced all of us into lockdown, films in which parents go mad over the evil that may be lurking outside their door have taken on a new dimension. Following closely on the heels of the very similar "Never Let Go," Hulu has dropped another story of a mommy who may be going mad in Karrie Crouse and Will Joines' "Hold Your Breath," following a TIFF premiere last month. It's anchored by a typically strong Sarah Paulson performance, to be sure. But "Hold Your Breath" is nonetheless a frustrating work, a sequence of powerful scenes that aren't tied together with enough tension to make us care. It's a film filled with moments but no momentum.
"Hold Your Breath" takes place in 1933 Oklahoma, at the height of the dust season, when storms can race in and destroy resources and take lives. A mother named Margaret Bellum (Paulson) is alone in this desolate landscape, her husband away as she cares for their two surviving children, Rose (Amiah Miller) and Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins). One night, Rose reads Ollie a story about the Gray Man, a mythical being who hides in the dust and shadows, someone who can get into your soul and make you do "terrible things." Is there something out there in the dust storms, something that can make normal people go mad and commit horrific crimes?
The threat level to the Bellums rises when stories circulate of a man who murdered a nearby family. Now they must fear the dust, the Gray Man, and this mysterious wanderer. But no threat may be more terrifying than Margaret's deteriorating mental state. She's sleepwalking at night and having horrible visions of intense dust storms. Another parallel to Margaret can be found in Esther (Annaleigh Ashford), another isolated local mother who seems to be declining similarly. It's hard to imagine the pressure of raising children in the Dust Bowl in the ‘30s, and there's actually a better drama embedded here about how maternal pressure can crystallize into madness under the right conditions. Paulson is at her best here when she's playing that sort of mental uncertainty, questioning whether the threat to her daughters is external or internal.
There are well-executed scenes in "Hold Your Breath," particularly two with a preacher played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach of "The Bear." In his first appearance, he rises from a barn like Nosferatu emerging from a coffin—a sharp image in a film with too few of them. Later, there's a tense scene around a dining table that Paulson and Moss-Bachrach nail. Finally, there's a sharp moment wherein Margaret basically has to pretend to be sane to the locals, or they may take her children away, although this scene feels truncated in the edit.
These beats that burst through the dust of "Hold Your Breath" aren't enough to recommend it, but they do hint at the better film buried by the storm. These moments don't rely on the Gray Man or CGI swirling dust. They understand that nothing is more terrifying than a mother on the edge of sanity, and all center their performers instead of a high concept. After all, nothing can make us catch our breath quite like a great actress doing what she does best.
Now on Hulu.
