Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
It took me a week to finally finish watching this 90-minute psychological horror movie, so I don’t want to spend too much time writing a compelling review for it. At first, the slow pace made me wonder if it should’ve been a miniseries, because despite the sluggish pace, the story keeps you intrigued about what’s going to happen next. By the time there are still 30 minutes left in Hold Your Breath, you already realize what’s likely to happen in the end, so the mystery is broken too. In fact, I wanted to stop watching it completely but continued anyway. “Entertaining” would be the last adjective one would use for the film, but Sarah Paulson delivers a fantastic performance, and there was definitely a lot of potential that was wasted.
Directed by Karrie Crouse and William Joines, Hold Your Breath is set in 1930s Oklahoma, where severe dust storms wreak havoc. With her husband away working in a different city, Margaret Bellum (Sarah Paulson) struggles to care for her two daughters, convinced that a sinister presence is threatening them. A recent case involving a drifter suspected of murdering an entire family in the area only intensifies her fears. Is it a drifter, a supernatural spirit, or someone/something else completely that’s looking to hurt the Bellum family? The relentless dust storms, failing crops, and lack of money seem to be smaller problems.
Amiah Miller, last seen in the horror-comedy My Best Friend’s Exorcism, plays Margaret’s elder daughter, Rose, while Alona Jane Robbins portrays the younger daughter, Ollie, who is deaf and mute due to scarlet fever. Margaret loses a third daughter to an unsaid illness, so she often suffers from nightmares and is all the more anxious about the well-being of her surviving daughters. Sarah Paulson is eerily unsettling as the over-protective mom, still grappling with the trauma of having a lost a child; while the dust-storms in their town emerge as one of the bigger villains in the tale. Ebon Moss-Bachrach plays Wallace Grady, a preacher, whose character in introduced in the second-half of Hold Your Breath and raises much suspicion.
The cinematography paints a vividly gloomy picture of dust-storm- and disease-ridden Oklahoma; however, the constant dusty tone of the film becomes monotonous. Adding to the visual boredom are the uninspiring conversations between the characters, all of whom fail to establish themselves as characters one should care for. Except for a few disturbing scenes, the scares are far too sparse in this snail-paced story. A good example of slow yet engaging psychological horror is Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass or the more recent 2024 movie Longlegs, both of which feature religious elements.
At the end of Hold Your Breath, Margaret’s character becomes increasingly desperate to protect her family, resorting to drastic measures to stay together, and a tragic climax finally puts an end to the Bellum family’s trials. Tighter writing and a more engaging screenplay would’ve made this movie so much better, watch the film only if you’re a patient viewer or a big Sarah Paulson fan.
Rating: 2 on 5 stars. Hold Your Breath is available on Disney Hotstar.
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