With a terrific sense of foreboding atmosphere and a strong lead performance from its star, the Hulu film Hold Your Breath nails two of the most important qualities necessary for any horror-thriller. By that measure, it’s a success. On the other hand, the further it goes, the story feels more and more familiar to another very famous horror classic. Telling you which one would probably be too much of a spoiler.

I haven’t decided yet whether it’s really fair to hold that against the movie. Just about everything’s derivative of something else these days, especially in the horror genre, and Hold Your Breath at least has a distinctive enough setting to stand out on its own. Still, the burden of familiarity weighs it down in the end.

Title:	Hold Your Breath
Year of Release:	2024
Directors:	Karrie Crouse William Joines
Watched On:	Hulu (via Disney+)

In 1930s Oklahoma, during the heart of the famous Dust Bowl disaster, almost nothing is left of one former farming community. The small town is practically deserted, as many families have already fled looking for better lives elsewhere. Margaret Bellum (Sarah Paulson) is among the few who have stayed behind. Her husband left to find work in the East, promising to send money back so that Margaret and their two daughters can join him, but mail delivery is erratic and they haven’t heard from him in a while.

Dust storms regularly ravage the area. Dust is omnipresent in the air and seeps into the house through every crack. Keeping it out is an impossible struggle. Other children in town have succumbed to illness blamed on the dust, and Margaret does everything she can to keep hers safe and healthy. Meanwhile, the daughters have become obsessed with the legend of a monster known as the Grey Man, who can supposedly turn to dust. If you breathe him in, he’ll make you do terrible things.

As if life weren’t already difficult enough, a mysterious stranger (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) turns up hiding in their barn. He claims to be a preacher named Brother Wallace and says he means them no harm. Naturally, they’re wary and want him out. Slowly, he starts to earn their trust, but Margaret remains suspicious. She isn’t sleeping well, suffers awful nightmares, and is prone to sleepwalking during which she doesn’t seem to be in control of her own actions. As her own behavior becomes increasingly erratic and irrational, the daughters worry that the Grey Man has hold of her. When Margaret eventually comes to believe that Brother Wallace is a monster out to destroy them, she feels it necessary to take drastic, even horrifying action to save her family’s souls at all cost.

Isolation, bad weather, a small family, paranoia, and a possible supernatural influence driving the protagonist crazy… Well, I’ve probably already spelled this out more than I originally intended. Needless to say, Hold Your Breath shares some themes and plot-points in common with a pretty big genre landmark, albeit one that took place in a different weather environment. I could probably draw connections to others as well. I’m not sure that Hold Your Breath really has too many original idea of its own, which may be part of the reason why the film was relegated to streaming rather than a theatrical release.

Where the movie succeeds is in the very evocative setting. Co-directors Karrie Crouse and William Joines put the isolated farmhouse to great use and make dust in the air feel like an oppressive threat. Sarah Paulson is excellent as a woman progressively unraveled by the stresses of her environment, whether real or imagined. Judged on its own, the writing holds up well enough. Those aspects make the movie worth watching, even if it probably won’t stand as a classic itself.

Video Streaming

Hold Your Breath streams on Hulu in 4K HDR. I watched via my account’s link through Disney+, because I typically get better results there than with the standalone Hulu app. The 2.39:1 image is a little hazy by design to capture the dusty environment, but has good textural detail in things like clothing fabric and dust particles floating in the air. The limited color palette of mostly browns and yellows is well-rendered. Much of the movie takes place at night, in a house supposedly lit by oil lamps (that never seem to flicker, because they were undoubtedly replaced with modern bulbs inside). The HDR grade maintains shadow detail without looking overly dim, and has very nice contrast in the sculpting of light and shadow.

While the lack of an Atmos mix seems like a missed opportunity here, the Dolby 5.1 soundtrack gets plenty immersive with the sounds of dust storms swirling all around the soundstage, including into height speakers with Dolby Surround Upmixer processing. In quieter scenes, creepy noises and whispered voices effectively bounce from speaker to speaker to keep you unsettled. The track has some decent bass in the score and the rumble of thunder.

Because one of the characters is deaf, some dialogue is subtitled. All subtitle text is positioned within the 2.39:1 movie image and is safe for Constant Image Height projection.

Related

• Sarah Paulson
  • Serenity (2005)