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Posted in: Movies, Review | Tagged: hold your breath, hulu
Hold Your Breath Tries Too Many Things At Once, Loses Focus {Review}
Hold Your Breath is well-acted, and pretty to look at, but lacks any depth or discovery in its story. It drops on Hulu tomorrow.
Article Summary
- Hold Your Breath boasts strong performances by Sarah Paulson and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, but lacks narrative focus.
- Directors Crouse and Joines mix too many ideas, resulting in a jumbled and frustrating thriller.
- The film's visuals and harsh setting are striking, yet the predictable plot fails to engage.
- Despite strong themes and acting, Hold Your Breath struggles with pacing and over-explains itself.
Hold Your Breath could have been a very affecting thriller, but it tries way too hard to service too many masters. Not even the always-wonderful Sarah Paulson is enough to save this one, as the story is never allowed to take center stage and breathe, pun intended. Directing duo Karrie Crouse and Will Joines have plenty of good ideas, the problem is they tried to shove them all into this one movie, and by the end, the jumbled mess is more frustrating than entertaining.
Hold Your Breath Is Too Predictable
Taking place in the 30s, Margaret (Paulson) is taking care of her two children while their father is off looking for work to keep them afloat. Persistent dust storms make living harsh, and Margaret dreams of being caught in said storm, unable to breathe, and waking up gasping for air, a hidden menace in the dust cloud. Her two daughters, teenager Rose (Amiah Miller) and Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins) share in their mother's struggles, especially Ollie, who is rendered deaf and mute by a bout with scarlet fever. One day, a strange man (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is found in their barn, and suddenly the cows go dry and Rose begins getting nosebleeds. Events unravel from there.
The problem with Hold Your Breath is not with the acting, as everyone here does a good job. Paulson and Moss-Bachrach are both excellent, with the latter oozing charisma and ickiness right from his introduction. Nor is the fault with the visuals, as the harsh elements and hard living conditions jump off the screen and are beautiful to look at. The film suffers from the same problem as Abigail earlier this year. You know where this is all going to end up for too much of the run time, and you just sit there waiting for a reveal that comes and mutter to yourself, "I guess that's it." No new ground is broken, no going off-track in the script. Everything is wholly predictable and frustrating.
This year has been maddeningly filled with scripts and storytelling that refuse to trust the audience and let them discover anything. Hold Your Breath is full of strong themes and performances, but the filmmakers fail in their thinking that the audience needs everything spoonfed to them. Instead, it becomes yet another 2024 thriller that has you grabbing your phone out of boredom rather than grabbing the armrest out of terror. Come for the visuals and performances.
Hold Your Breath begins streaming on Hulu beginning October 3.
Hold Your Breath
5/10
Hold Your Breath features great performances, and a gorgeous setting, but cannot overcome an overstuffed story that features a frustrating lack of discovery.
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