Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like COVID is everywhere in 2024 horror production. Yes, isolation stories have been a part of the genre for a long time, but since 2020 forced us all into lockdown, the movies in which parents go crazy 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 released another story of a mom who may be going crazy in Karrie Crouse and Will Joines’ “Hold Your Breath,” following a premiere at TIFF last month. It’s anchored by a typically strong performance from Sarah Paulson, to be sure. But “Hold Your Breath” is nonetheless a frustrating piece of work, a sequence of powerful scenes that aren’t tied together with enough tension for us to care. It is a film full of moments but without momentum.
“Hold Your Breath” takes place in Oklahoma in 1933, at the height of dust season, when storms can come and destroy resources and claim lives. A mother named Margaret Bellum (Paulson) is alone in this desolate landscape, her husband away while she cares for her 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 dust storms, something that can make normal people go crazy and commit horrible crimes?
The threat level for the Bellums increases 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 can be more terrifying than Margaret’s deteriorating mental state. She sleepwalks at night and has horrible visions of intense dust storms. Another parallel to Margaret can be found in Esther (Annaleigh Ashford), another isolated local mother who appears to be similarly declining. It’s hard to imagine the pressure of raising children in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and there’s actually better drama embedded here about how maternal pressure can crystallize into madness under the right conditions. Paulson is at her best here when she plays with that kind of mental uncertainty, wondering if 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 emerges from a barn like Nosferatu emerging from a coffin – a sharp image in a film with very 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 where Margaret basically has to pretend to be sane to the locals, or they can take her children, although this scene feels truncated in the editing.
These rhythms that cut through the dust of “Hold Your Breath” are not enough to recommend it, but they do hint at the better film buried by the storm. These moments don’t depend on the Gray Man or the swirling CGI dust. They understand that nothing is scarier than a mother on the brink of sanity, and they all center their performers rather than a high concept. After all, nothing can make us catch our breath like a great actress doing what she does best.
Now on Hulu.