“DUST is something bad, something wrong, something evil and wicked.”
This quote from Philip Pullman’s fantasy novel His Dark Materials captures the very essence of Sarah Paulson’s latest film Hold Your Breath.
Set in 1930s Oklahoma amid the the worst of the region’s horrific dust storms, a mother alone with her two young daughters is convinced that a sinister presence is threatening her family.
Now screening on Stars over on Disney+, this is a story about isolation and mental illness in a shrinking world with danger lurking in every begrimed corner.
Margaret Bellum (Paulson) is left looking after her two children, Rose (Amiah Miller) and Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins), while her husband is away on business. With death skulking in every vital gulp of air, Margaret and her neighbours live on their nerves, scrubbing and cleaning just to try and keep the oppressive dust at bay.
Life is hard enough in this windswept wasteland, and the constant threat to their respiratory systems from the persistent dust storms plays havoc with their mental health as well as physical.
After Rose reads a story to Ollie about the Gray Man, a mythical being who hides in the dust and shadows, a storm of a different kind starts to brew around the Bellum household.
Is the Gray Man, who can get into your soul and make you do “terrible things”, out in the dust storms watching Margaret and her children?
Margaret certainly thinks so. When news passes through the district of a man who murdered a nearby family they are soon consumed by fear of dust, a phantasmal monster, and now a wandering killer.
Sleep eludes them as Margaret’s mental health starts to deteriorate, and as well as sleepwalking with a loaded shotgun, she is also having frightening visions of The Gray Man who can make people go mad and commit terrible crimes.
When neighbour and close friend Esther (Annaleigh Ashford) loses her mind and children to the internal storm of despair, it serves as another foreboding warning to Margaret and her young children.
Paulson is compelling as ever and the cinematography is magnificent, but this ominous thriller is let down by a lack of momentum and a fragmented narrative.
It’s all huff and very little puff.
(2/5)
