Drought and isolation enhance the subtle horror mood that permeates throughout Hold Your Breath. With a story from the Oklahoma dust bowl of the 1930’s and wickedly devilish soundtrack, it’s easy to fear imaginary monsters when the world is trying hard to kill you.
Hold Your Breath is a perfect blend of isolation, parental worry, and good old fashion desperation. The stage is set with the location of the story being based in the Oklahoma dust bowl of the 1930’s. This is the time of the Great Depression, and the locale looks more akin to Mars than a family farm in North America. Sarah Paulson’s Margaret is just trying to keep her daughters Rose and Ollie safe in a world that has many traps waiting to spring.
Margaret has already lost a daughter named Ada to scarlet fever, and with her husband having left to travel east for work, Margaret is all alone with her daughters in the middle of nowhere. Their farm hasn’t grown a crop in over a year, and when a drifter named Wallace Grady, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, is found hiding in the barn, fear is manifested into this dirty drifter’s form.
Wallace seems friendly at first, but soon he starts to act malevolent with his words and deeds. Margaret fears that Wallace is the drifter that was seen in the community, and that he may be a supernatural killer in the form of ‘the Grey Man’. As desperation sets in, Margaret learns that true horror won’t come in the form of a drifter who wears her husband’s coat.
Hold Your Breath has an intimate claustrophobic quality that amplifies the chills and thrills that few films consistently use to drive the story. The isolation on the farm and claustrophobia of being indoors all day to avoid breathing in the blowing dust ratchets the tension to a breaking point that few would survive.
It is easy to get swept up into the hysteria that would grow in the setting of the film. The fact that the story is taking a piece of American history and allowing the very real events of dried-up farms and consistently wild and world ending dust storms to heighten the mood was a brilliant choice. Directors Karrie Krouse and William Joines allow the natural elements to play on the audience’s emotions and build the fear that people would experience while watching the movie rather than dousing the screen with buckets of blood.
Sarah Paulson is a gift on any stage. She embodies her character and places such depth and personality in Margaret that it is easy for the audience to feel for the heartbroken mother. Paired with Paulson is Amiah Miller as Rose, Margaret’s eldest daughter. Miller makes Rose a strong and confident teen, who steers clear of being a cliché victim to be in a typical horror film.
The true revelation for this reviewer is Ebon Moss-Bachrach. Wallace Grady is one of the more unique characters to hit the screen this year and Moss-Bachrach is so good in this role that it’s easy for the audience to fall under his spell and miss the obvious signs of concern that are evident upon his entry to the narrative. The one problem is that Moss-Bachrach is not in the film long enough.
Admiring the performances and languishing on the truth to the horror of how difficult and terrible life must have been for people living during this time is a refreshing choice. There is violence, fear, and blood, but this is not a slasher movie of brutality. It’s a film that focuses on how real-life choices can lead to the scariest moments.
As much as I enjoyed the performance and the scenery, the story is predictable. It is easy to see halfway through the movie what is really happening and how the movie will most likely end. I appreciated the climax to the story with the metaphorical cutting of the umbilical cord by Rose. However, I wasn’t on the edge of my seat like I was when Moss-Bachrach terrorized the family.
Hold Your Breath walks a fine line of predictability. There is nothing new or unique to the narrative, but the excellent performances by the lead actors and Zoe White’s spectacular cinematography help elevate the film. The fierceness of a dust storm will terrorize the audience more than a supernatural killer.