Hold Your Breath - Movie Review

The Movie: Hold Your Breath

The Directors: Karrie Crouse and Will Joines

The Cast: Sarah Paulson, Amiah Miller, Annaleigh Ashford, Alona Jane Robbins, Ebon Moss-Bachrach

The Story: In 1930s Oklahoma amid the region’s horrific dust storms, a woman is convinced that a sinister presence is threatening her family.

The Rating: 5 / 10

The Review:

Sarah Paulson is a really great actor. Her resume is packed with outstanding performances across both the cinema and TV landscapes and she's been working consistently for thirty years. With that kind of resume, she is someone that you should watch no matter what she is in because it's a very good bet that you're going to see something special, at least from her performance, if not the entire production.

Okay, so yes, Paulson is great in this movie as she always is and yet this is one of those instances when she could have used some additonal help because they story and everything else about the movie is just sort of blah. It's nothing we haven't seen before and, while I can see where the filmmakers wanted the story to go, the whole thing unfortantely falls flat where it counts the most. There's a few scares but they're pretty mild and not nearly enough to hang the movie on and there's little to no drama outside of what Paulson herself brings along with her performance.

Is it a bad movie? I would say no, I'm not mad that I watched it and the run time is a merciful one hour and 34 minutes so that really helped. Any longer than that, these types of movies are often pushed up to the two hour mark, and I would have been a lot more frustrated. Just like the visuals, the story is dull and gray and brown and just sort of there. Maybe because I've seen so many movies like this, the drama and tension couldn't find a place to land for me and everything just sort of swirled around and then fell to the ground, more like a calm breeze than the deadly dust storm it was striving to be.

Hulu is definitely a great landing spot for this movie as I doubt it would have done much with a theatrical release. At least it's out there for anyone to check out and we get to see one of the better actors of the last few decades do her thing so that's definitely a plus.