Hold Your Breath has a lot going for it. There are horror elements that give it an unsettling touch; the dust storms that permeate the film help in that regard. There are hints of the gray man, a figure that comes and goes, slipping through cracks in the door and windows with a threat of possession and fear. And there’s a central story of a mother’s grief, which pushes her toward an unraveling that puts her daughters in harm’s way. But all of these elements don’t come together cohesively or meaningfully. Worse, parts of the film are confusing and strange.

Co-directed by Will Joines and Karrie Crouse, who also wrote the film, Hold Your Breath leaves a lot to be desired. The film is set in 1933 and follows Margaret (Sarah Paulson), a mother to two daughters, Rose (Amiah Miller) and Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins), and now the sole caretaker of their home after her husband leaves Oklahoma to find work. The family’s farm has seen better days, as the consistent dust storms and lack of rain make it impossible to grow anything. Margaret, still in the ravages of grief, grows more unhinged as the story progresses.

Hold Your Breath Has Too Many Plots
It Doesn’t Give Enough Attention To Any Of Them

The trouble with Hold Your Breath is not its ideas, but its execution of them. There are also too many directions the film is trying to go and often loses focus because of it. Paulson’s performance grounds the story and she is the picture of a mother who’s coming apart at the seams due to grief and despair, but it’s not enough to keep the horror afloat. Even calling the film a horror does it a disservice. There aren’t enough horror aspects to justify its horror title.

The film is part family drama, part horror, and part psychological thriller. The latter is what worked best for me, as the writing makes clear Margaret is unwell and still stuck in the past, her grief holding her hostage.

Margaret’s nightmares can be terrifying in their chaos and desperation, but these moments are few and far between. Joines and Crouse seem to rely on the madness these situations bring — and they’re good at creating tension between Margaret and Rose, specifically — but they fail to carry the film or, frankly, hold our attention. The more powerful and emotional beats in the story get lost in the gusty winds of the dust storms. Paulson is excellent at capturing Margaret’s mental deterioration, and she plays her as fiercely protective while simultaneously being on the brink of detaching from reality.

But as powerful and sympathetic a performance Paulson gives, Hold Your Breath’s story developments and direction don’t do her any favors. The film is part family drama, part horror, and part psychological thriller. The latter is what worked best for me, as the writing makes clear Margaret is unwell and still stuck in the past, her grief holding her hostage.

The family drama is, at times, elevated because of Margaret’s mental health, but it isn’t strong on its own. The three parts are in constant battle with each other. In the end, though, none win and what we’re left with is a disjointed film, a tangle of ideas that never work or come together to create something intelligible or even worthwhile. It’s a shame, too, because the film starts well — laying the groundwork for the family’s trajectory and being disconcerting while doing so — before its quality plummets.

I Really Wanted To Like Hold Your Breath, But Its Problems Outweigh Its Likability

By the end I found myself wondering when it would end because I’d lost interest in the how. Hold Your Breath has a lot of potential, but it’s too busy trying to hold on to multiple stories to be truly effective. It falls apart before Margaret gets a chance to, and even its 94-minute runtime starts to feel achingly long because there’s not a lot that happens. The tone is certainly set, but the story can’t seem to power through its setup to deliver something intriguing or even very emotional.

Hold Your Breath wants us to not trust the dust itself, when it’s Margaret we should have been suspicious of from the start. The inclusion of the gray man falls flat when it could’ve been chilling, and any forward momentum is stalled by the film’s attempts at horror rather than in a more nuanced exploration of grief and loss. When a film is trying to tell three stories at once, it’s bound to get tied up in its own narrative misgivings, and Hold Your Breath is certainly culpable of that.

Hold Your Breath is streaming on Hulu on October 3. The film is 94 minutes long and rated R for some violence/disturbing images.