‘Hold Your Breath’: An Unhinged Sarah Paulson Redefines Scream Queen in Erratic Dust Bowl Horror

Tony Sokol

Actor Sarah Paulson is a true scream queen in “Hold Your Breath.” A horrified, throat-rattling wail concludes every revelatory vision in directing duo Karrie Crouse and Will Joines’ parched supernatural thriller. Set in 1933, during the Oklahoma Dust Bowl disaster, Paulson plays Margaret Bellum, mother of Rose (Amiah Miller) and Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins). Their father gets paying work in the difficult economy of the time, building bridges out of state. Margaret decides to stay behind, leaving her and the two children to fend for themselves in an increasingly unforgiving climate. 

Each of the immediate family members internalize their shared dynamic. For the Bellums, events center on a grieving mother struggling to protect her kids from outer and inner dangers. It wreaks havoc on her nerves. She pops pills for sleepwalking, but Margaret’s dreams are interrupted. It becomes repetitive. Designed to provide consistent cognitive dissonance, the trick quickly loses shock value, becoming predictable and distracting.

The theme of the brutally enforced resilience of frontier women is novel. Paulson is intense, vulnerable and devastatingly frightening. Borderline personality disorder and post-traumatic survivors suffer unpredictable after-effects. Insomniac mood swings are horrifyingly impossible to discern until after Margaret makes dangerous interior decisions. As a wife and mother dealing with incrementally growing grief, compounded with schemes to avoid further loss, Margaret is wound tight. The struggle brings disorientating ambiguity. Margaret’s head is not a safe place to be, but she is not comfortable in her flesh either, as the body horror explorations provoke involuntary, but oddly satisfying winces. 

Paulson expertly captures Margaret’s descent into madness, and projects multilayered desperation to protect her daughters. Even on the abyss, Paulson commits to Margaret. Her expressions amplify unease in quiet moments. After three years ducking the horror genre, Paulson leaps headlong into the role. Similarly, though testified in public, the daughters see what we believe them to see, Miller and Robbins power through battles of loyalty and fear individually. The Bellum trio presents a natural family chemistry. Miller, as the older daughter, leaves an indelible mark as the voice of reason at the abyss. Robbins as the deaf younger daughter, Ollie, is ultimately underused. 

Annaleigh Ashford plays Margaret’s flailing sister, Esther. Ashford accepts the unsubtle disappointments Paulson’s Margaret unpacks with various shades of dismissed regard. Every glance at the dust-coated furniture contains the glare of judgment from the visiting Margaret, with the local sheriff soon in tow, as if every tragedy should be swept away like the remnants of an overwhelming sand storm. Sweeping is healthier than crying. It could be a family motto.

The Bellums’ third daughter died of Scarlet Fever a few years prior to the film’s event. The affliction was going around. Its specter lingers through unspoken glances and photographic documentation of the sad banality of massive deaths. Esther is introduced while labeled unfit to care for her young son, Thomas (Nathan Gariety), suffering from pneumonia. Omnipresent paranoia regarding sickness reflects the modern pandemic. Death permeates the early scenes.

“Hold Your Breath” shows local folklore, urban legends and contagious superstitions didn’t begin with modern meme culture. Fantasy mixes with claustrophobic reality in a book about a Grey Man that the Bellum daughters read together to pass the time. Representing a Dust Bowl era “Slenderman,” the Grey Man haunts the devastated Great Plains inducing strangers to inhale dust, and surrender to radical changes with vicious results. 

Local lore contends the Grey Man can sneak through even the smallest of cracks. The stories correspond with rumors of a local drifter, and probable murderer, in this small, gossipy, and highly suspicious panhandle community. Is this community set in an intolerant world or does Margaret evolve into the outsider to survive. As if conjured by the horror genre gods, a preacher, Wallace Grady, who claims to know Margaret’s husband is found living secretly, seeking sanctuary in the Bellum barn. He has the healing touch, but also displays supernatural powers like rainmaking. Margaret is concerned about how neighbors will spin it, as her husband is away.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach plays Grady, the mysterious interloping holy man with incriminating restraint. Upon his introduction, “Hold Your Breath” dangles the promise of a paddle through the drenched dark bayou abyss of director Charles Laughton’s classic “The Night of the Hunter.” This movie’s dry, immersive dust storms can capably evoke the atmospheric tension of the 1955 film. But “Hold Your Breath” stumbles into modern horror’s approach without committing to the genre. The psychological drama includes various horror elements as reminders. The film still manages to consistently evoke an eerie atmosphere. However, any distinctive cinematic identity blows away from “Hold Your Breath” like dust in the wind.

The filming is beautiful. The landscape is immersed in the harsh and ever-shifting environment. The storms are relentless. Roads are death traps as winds carry the remnants of dead dirt to every crack and crevice. The cinematic environment is buried in a surreal atmosphere with isolation as a character. Cinematographer Zoë White and the directing duo never miss a chance to shine a sunbeam through the small galaxies of dust in the air, infusing the free-floating debris with ominous intent. 

“Hold Your Breath” fails to capture the suspense of a psychological thriller nor satisfy a horror fan’s expectations. Separate acts capture different tones, but are left unresolved, repetitious and anticlimactic. The players limit psychological horrors to confined drama that gets more predictable as it moves statically.

While the approach is novel, the story remains derivative. The ultimate reveal is telegraphed, as well as allegorically foreshadowed with limited subtlety. Regardless of how off-centered a path “Hold Your Breath” takes to a revelatory twist, the result is familiar. Once a connection is made between the Grey Man’s mental infiltration and Margaret’s half-filled jar of sleeping pills, concluding the ultimate blur is a sleepwalk away.

“Hold Your Breath” begins streaming Oct. 3 on Hulu.