By Robert Scucci | Published
I told myself a long time ago that I would stop seeking out psychological horror films that rely on the “unreliable protagonist” trope. Unfortunately, I didn’t read my own memo while watching last year’s show. Hold your breath on Hulu. I can’t say I’m mad at myself, but I’m disappointed in expecting something different, since this movie is a period piece set in 1930s Oklahoma, after that the Dust Bowl took over once-thriving farmland. decimated by the elements.
But don’t be fooled by the refreshing setting, because all of Tropey’s strengths can be found in Hold your breath:
Centered on a grieving mother named Margaret Bellum (Sarah Paulson), Hold your breath is a by-the-numbers exercise exploring the paranoia and heartbreak experienced by our protagonist as she attempts to combat the dark forces intent on taking her children’s lives while her husband, Henry (Bill Heck), works on a construction project in Philadelphia.
A familiar accumulation
Hold your breath wastes no time introducing a source of evil that will only vaguely make you question the validity of Margaret’s experiences. But if you’re familiar with psychological horror, you’ll find yourself sitting with your Bingo trope card as you check off all the boxes that make this film another generic, quasi-supernatural experience.
In a house covered from floor to ceiling in thick layers of dust, Margaret raises her two daughters, Rose (Amiah Miller) and Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins). Grief-stricken after the death of her youngest daughter, Ada, Margaret takes prescription sleeping pills to prevent her from having sleepwalking episodes after experiencing a psychotic break before the events that unfold in Hold your breath. At first it seems that Margaret has her sanity under control, but everything changes after Rose reads Ollie a horror story about a ghoul who hides in clouds of dust called “The Gray Man “.
The gray man
Knowing that “The Gray Man” is a work of fiction, Margaret cancels the first scares in Hold your breath as a figment of her daughter’s overactive imagination after reading the horror story. However, Margaret’s imagination takes over after hearing about a drifter who murdered his neighbors in circumstances that mirror the events depicted in “The Gray Man.”
Shortly after learning of this grisly crime, Margaret finds a drifter hiding in her barn who turns out to be a pastor named Wallace (Ebon Moss-Bachrach).
Margaret becomes suspicious of Wallace when the circumstances surrounding his arrival don’t quite add up. Wallace assures Margaret that her husband, Henry, sent him to check on his family as he passed through the Oklahoma Territory. Wallace, who possesses supernatural healing powers, threatens the Bellum family when his intentions are questioned, putting Margaret under increased surveillance for suspicious behavior.
Margaret stops taking her medication to be more alert, seals up the house and lives in hiding with her daughters as she tries to ward off the evil spirit that has now taken over her family. As she becomes more and more delusional with each passing day, Wallace’s presence becomes a force of evil in Hold your breath it comes and goes as quickly as the dust storms that destroyed crops in previous years. As Margaret becomes increasingly paranoid, the line between fact and fiction becomes equally blurred when she begins experiencing new episodes of sleepwalking.
A solid entry point, but not for connoisseurs
Hold your breath is one of those films you’ll want to show to your friends who are interested in psychological thrillers, but aren’t yet jaded by watching similar premises play out in other films occupying the subgenre. Boasting supernatural elements that seem to validate our protagonist’s memories of events, Hold your breath has a good amount of tense moments and jump cuts that will keep casual viewers on the edge of their seats.
The most seasoned psychological thriller fans, however, will find themselves yawning once things start to heat up, because I guarantee they’ve seen this familiar story involving an unreliable protagonist play out dozens of times before , but in different contexts.
Hold your breath is a Hulu original movie and you can stream it with an active subscription.
