Captivating, visually stunning and frightening. The tense psychological thriller Hold Your Breath marks the feature debut of directing duo Karrie Crouse and Will Joines.
Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 12, the film is as equally eerie as it is alluring, bringing you on a wrestling internal battle of trying to decipher reality from fantasy, with a compelling Sarah Paulson at the centre.
This article contains spoilers for the film ‘Hold Your Breath.’
Opening in a field, the sight of three little girls innocently playing amongst the tall grass is abruptly cut by the sounds of wailing, aggressive coughing and the darkness of dust.
It was all a dream, albeit induced by heavy sleeping pills, and Paulson’s character Margaret Bellum, thankfully sighs.
The year is 1933, set in a nearly barren, dirt-ridden town in Oklahoma.
The first few minutes set the tone for an environment on the brink of apocalypse: the crops are dry, the farm animals are running out of supply, the children are getting sick and dying, and no one can breathe due to constant suffocating dust storms.
Margaret’s daughters, who we saw in the beginning, are often kept inside because of the deadly storms. There are only two girls now; the youngest, Ada June Bellum, died from scarlet fever years prior. Regardless, Margaret loves her girls dearly and protects them with all of her resources (including her shotgun), especially being the only parent present in the household since their father travelled to Philadelphia.
Eldest daughter Rose (Amiah Miller) keeps her younger deaf sister Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins) entertained (and scared) with the spine-chilling story of “The Gray Man.” The tale follows an ominous, faceless man that hides himself in the dust. He seeps into the cracks, and if you breathe him in, he’ll do terrible things.
Their ghastly storytime is cut short however, with Margaret insisting that the story is not real.
From there, several unexplainable incidents occur; Ollie begins to see a figure in the shadows, the family’s cow is set loose, and there are constant footsteps in the barn.
The latter turns out to be a man, who identifies himself as Wallace Grady (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), allegedly sent by Margaret’s husband Henry to check on the family.
Wallace claims to be a healer – a “man of the cloth” if you will. Although facing much doubt and hesitancy from Margaret, he earns his keep in the household after curing Rose’s constant nose bleeds from the dust.
However, a letter from Henry vindicates Margaret’s intuition. Wallace is a thief and a murderer on the loose who has come to rob the family. After facing the barrel of Margaret’s shotgun, he leaves, but not before promising one thing: they’re not going to be able to stop “The Gray Man.”
All hell breaks loose. Nightmares ensue. The girls’ beds are set on fire. Paranoia is at an all-time high. The house is completely covered up, not even the light of day can intrude. Is that Wallace at the door again or is it the dust knocking? Who knows.
Between Margaret’s now nightly bouts of hallucinating sleep-walking leading to terrifyingly jumpy awakenings and the menacing whirrs from the dust storm breaking the frequent silence, the audience was on edge as the story unfolded. This is perhaps the most engaging yet disorienting part of the film.
From here, we were all shaken by some deeply disturbing moments, such as Margaret slitting her thigh with a knife and using her blood as cheek blush or sewing a needle directly through her palm. As I looked around, audience members watched through their hands covering their eyes, some looking away entirely. At this point, Margaret feels no pain, and instead we as viewers are tormented by the gore.
Margaret’s state of confusion, unaware of the difference between real life and slumber, leads her on a journey so petrifying that the townspeople are concerned and even her children are afraid. The mother they adored is nothing but a vessel that “The Gray Man” has now inhibited.
Realizing the damage she’s done, Margaret decides it’s time to reconnect with Ada in the afterlife. Distributing her crushed sleeping pills in bowls of soup, she wishes to bring the girls with her too.
Refusing to fall into her mother’s fatal trap, Rose makes the heartbreakingly brave decision to trick her mother, sending her outside during a dust storm in search of Ollie. Recognizing the only way to love her mother is to let her go, Rose cuts the rope that connected Margaret to the home, leaving her lost and suffocating in the stifling environment.
The film has an inspirational ending, with the girls aboard a train, leaving their past behind, but not before we see shots of dust dwindling, a reminder of the trauma that will always live inside of them.
Hold Your Breath was quite literally breathtaking. As unsettling as the atmosphere was, it was also starkly beautiful. As someone who isn’t very fond of horror movies, the psychological aspect kept me locked in, wondering just how far Margaret would be willing to go to protect her family.
With this film, Sarah Paulson has solidified herself as this generation’s scream queen. Past roles such as in American Horror Story, Run and Ratched were all a warm-up to becoming Margaret in Hold Your Breath, which is yet another convincingly chilling character that showcases her depth and flexibility as a horror movie icon.
Hold Your Breath will be released by Searchlight Pictures as a Hulu original film in the U.S. on Oct. 3.
