Ryan McNeilHow is one to keep safe from danger when any deep breath can let the danger in?
Set in Oklahoma at the height of The Dust Bowl, HOLD YOUR BREATH introduces us to Margaret (Sarah Paulson) and her two daughters. The blight is raging, the crops are dead, the family is starving, her husband is working in Pennsylvania and hasn’t written…to say “things are bleak” would be understating the matter.
Then family needs to deal with strangers at the door.
Physically, there is a drifter/preacher (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) who may-or-may-not be what he seems. Spiritually, there is “The Grey Man”…something of a Babadook/Baba Yaga that can come and go with the dust.
Both unexpected guests make life outside the cottage a waking nightmare, but it’s life inside the cottage that seems more frayed and more fraught.
HOLD YOUR BREATH is a tale of high stakes. The life of these women can be completely undone by a window left open, or too many steps taken out the front door. It is a time not only of isolation and starvation – but a time where just inhaling too deeply threatens to destroy you from within.
That is what is known. When one then adds in the unknown of The Grey Man and the way this family of faith is having their Christian beliefs tested, it becomes easy to see how their spirit and heart run the risk of buried in the dirt.
HOLD YOUR BREATH is both gothic horror and greek tragedy buttoned into one faded calico dress. It wants us to look at how fraught people can become in times of crisis, and reflect on the crisis we just endured.
It paints a haunting portrait of missed warnings and false hopes. It’s a harbinger that while the crisis swirls outside the cabin, one shouldn’t ignore the very real dangers inside the room…and inside those we love.