An award-winning actor playing a fiercely, even frighteningly, protective mother guarding her two children from an unspecified malevolence in a remote home. No, I’m not talking about last month’s Halle Berry horror Never Let Go (is anyone still talking about that one?), but rather this month’s Sarah Paulson horror Hold Your Breath, a film that carries surface similarities (as well as a hopelessly generic rollercoaster-warning-esque title). Like that film, it plays with recent genre trends – a remote, pandemic-suited location and the corrosive effect of mental illness – as well as the use of a life-saving rope tied to the home for those who need to leave. And like that film, it’s also a bit of a mess.
Originally titled Dust, originally set to star Claire Foy and originally intended for a theatrical release, the film arrives at the beginning of Hulu’s month of genre fare, dubbed Huluween. It’s far classier than that categorisation would suggest (especially when compared with films like cheapo evil pumpkin horror Carved), a handsomely made 1930s-set thriller that, unlike most streaming offerings today, also looks like it could stretch to a cinema screen. Added class also comes from Paulson, one of the most reliable small-screen and stage actors we have, who hasn’t really had enough big-screen chances at least not as lead. While Hold Your Breath isn’t quite able to keep up with her, it’s at least a deserving and all-consuming showcase, the actor exhaustively giving it her all.
She plays Margaret, a mother on the edge, mentally and literally, living in one of Oklahoma’s most stricken areas during the devastating dust storms of the 30s, hit hard by the drought and struggling to provide for her two daughters. The bleak conditions and the lingering grief from the death of a third daughter has made Margaret a whirlwind of nerves and neuroses, paranoid that the dust is making them sick and plagued by recurring nightmares. The townsfolk gossip about desperate drifters taking advantage of father-less households while her kids tell stories about a boogeyman made of dust, facts and fiction starting to curdle for Margaret. Is there someone out there, or is it her mind playing tricks?
Co-directors Karrie Crouse and Will Joines rush through the establishing scenes with an overreliance on montage, the clipped pace giving the impression that much was cut (at 94 minutes, it feels a little too short). The pair do manage to build an effective sense of unease, the scenario giving us unavoidable Covid-era anxiety as the family fear the impact of allowing too much dust in the house, nervously covering gaps to the outside and wearing masks to protect themselves. While it’s not exactly Twisters, the menacing swirl of the storm feels surprisingly grand and imposing, a foreboding atmosphere not one of the film’s problems.
Those arise more from the scattered plotting as our hold on the film unravels along with our lead character’s grip on reality, as she encounters a mysterious preacher (played by The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach), struggles with her reckless sister (Tony winner Annaleigh Ashford) and starts to question where the real danger is coming from. Her fraught relationship with the preacher does give the film one of the finest moments of suspense, involving a letter from afar, but his presence in the film feels too truncated to have much of an impact. It’s one of many strands in a story that could have afforded a tighter focus and it all dissolves into nothing when the finale comes into view, any questioning over what is and isn’t real fading into fatigue. Where we end up at is of no great surprise and the beats of the reveal feel far too over-familiar at this particular trauma horror moment.
Paulson’s commitment is unwavering, and it’s refreshing to see her in genre material a little more grounded than what the various American Horror Stories have given her, but she’s an actor in search of better material and, sadly, Hold Your Breath means that search is ongoing.