It’s 1933. The Oklahoma Panhandle is ravaged by dust storms and droughts so insidious that its occupants are forced to shelter inside, leaving them alone with nothing but a steady, seeping film of particulate matter and their thoughts.
This tension defines the crux of “Hold Your Breath,” a psychological thriller, and the feature debut from Karrie Crouse and Will Joines. Helmed by a lead performance from the reigning scream queen and "American Horror Story" alumn, Sarah Paulson, the film, which premieres on Hulu on October 3, is perfectly positioned to offer a novel take on gothic horror, down to its muted palette and stifling, isolated atmosphere. Instead, “Hold Your Breath” struggles to find narrative footing, leading the plot to meander into predictable territory that is made largely redeemable by Paulson’s Margaret, the steadily unraveling matriarch of a blonde, plaited brood of girls.
Left alone to care for her daughters Rose (Amiah Miller) and Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins), who is deaf, while her husband is away on a job meant to improve the family’s financial circumstances, Margaret finds herself in a constant state of worry. It’s not long after the death of her third daughter from scarlet fever, a tragedy that leaves her feeling tethered to her homestead despite her family’s dire circumstances — their cow has stopped producing milk, their only form of sustenance — amid an increasingly hostile environment. She oscillates between needlework with a group of women from town and tending to her daughters at home — it’s a humdrum life that feels creepingly claustrophobic, even without the adverse climate that leaves them trapped indoors.
Shots of sparkling specks of dust floating in the air are cut alongside frames of Margaret’s tightly drawn face — between trembling hands, jerky expressions, darting eyes and her iconic horror howl, Paulson is exceedingly masterful at the whole, “trying and failing to keep my cool” housewife bit. She pops sleeping pills to help her abate night terrors and bouts of sleepwalking that have plagued her since her daughter’s death. It’s hardly a subtle form of goading the viewer when Margaret candidly admits that these terrors made her “do things” (wink wink.)
The omnipresent dust is compounded by a pall of death that has settled over the town. Margaret’s needlework sessions are injected with fear when rumors of “The Drifter,” a mysterious killer who supposedly “melted into the dust,” enter the ladies’ gossip circle. This report dovetails neatly with “The Grey Man,” the ominous subject of a scary story in a book Rose reads to Ollie at night. The tale of The Grey Man is contrasted with a quaint, recurring bedtime memory Margaret tells Rose and Ollie to help them sleep amid the screaming wind. “Tell us about the wheat,” Rose implores her mother, who then recounts times of abundant and lush harvest, with blades of wheat so high that they mimicked the movement of a rollicking sea, so dense that the girls could play hide-and-seek in them. “It was perfect,” Margaret reminisces.
Sarah Paulson in "Hold Your Breath" (Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures)Margaret's mind is plunged into further chaos when Ollie claims to have seen The Grey Man holed up in the family’s barn. Though she’s initially reluctant to give credence to Ollie’s claim, Margaret does eventually come upon a stowaway “man of the cloth” (though he’s more dirty and unkempt than grey), played by “The Bear”’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach. Though it is an understandable and ostensibly intentional segue, meant to patch up any lingering questions about whether the Drifter-Grey Man hybrid is real or merely a hazy fable, this subplot comes off as superfluous — especially since a diligent viewer will come to see that, for once, it isn’t a man that Margaret and her girls should be wary of.
When this relationship sours and the preacher, Wallace, reveals himself to be a con man, Margaret’s maternal instinct to protect her daughters — no matter the cost — intensifies tenfold, and she resorts to touting a shotgun at all times. She pathologizes her daughters’ every move, resulting in some serious moments of tension. As she recedes from the townsfolk congregation, shoving cloth in every nook and cranny of her modest home in an effort to fend off the infiltration of ever-persistent dust, the rumor mill begins to whirr: it’s clear that Margaret’s psychological state is in peril.
What's even more clear is the direction the film is headed in. Though Paulson’s performance as the paranoid mother, left alone with a gun and all the grit she can muster, is entirely convincing, her superb acting is undercut by “Hold Your Breath”’s formulaic plotline. You don’t need to be a horror aficionado to know that no Grey Man or Drifter is going to do this family more harm than Margaret eventually will, though she doesn’t even realize it. From her fitful nights of sleep to her metastisizing fear of the dust, it’s easy to deduce her inevitable role in what’s to come.
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By this point, it’s also hard to ignore the film’s overreliance on jump scares and booming sound in favor of a nuanced plot. Quick cuts to Margaret slamming furniture to bolster the house’s security or thunderous banging on the door are almost too ubiquitous to “Hold Your Breath.” However, the film’s wide-shot visuals — which range from their home enveloped in a misty haze to dust swallowing the land whole — and portentous, tinkling soundtrack work extremely well in fomenting a nonstop feeling of suspense. While the film’s plot may register as scattered and all too easy to predict, it renders its viewers immobile with nerves from start to finish, a feat largely accomplished by these thoughtful auditory and aesthetic details.
Like flecks of dust, its granular details, combined with Paulson’s expertise, engender an undeniably jittery atmosphere. “Hold Your Breath”’s most terrifying moments come in the last 15 minutes or so of the broader 94, a strategy that would be effective — especially alongside Paulson’s inimitable ability to do her thing so well — if what preceded it hadn’t been so jumbled. It could certainly be argued that this lack of cohesion is a deftly wielded film tactic, meant to mirror Margaret’s steadily deteriorating mental state. Still, though, it’s a difficult aspect of the film to reconcile.
While certainly not a negative first foray into the genre, Crouse and Joines’ “Hold Your Breath” is hard to designate as an impactful horror film. Ultimately, the dust that suffuses Margaret and her family materializes more successfully than the film’s ability to deliver something new.
"Hold Your Breath" is streaming now on Hulu.
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