Hold Your Breath, on Hulu

Compared to what Oklahoma experienced in the 1930s, current climate change looks rather mild. It wasn’t called the Dust Bowl for no reason. Even before, living was always a constant struggle for “dirt farmers.” Tragically, one high-strung mother’s two greatest phobias, dust and drifters, will plague her at the same time. They might even be related in Karrie Crouse & William Joines’ Hold Your Breath, which premieres today on Hulu.

Margaret Bellum’s hardscrabble life always emphasized the hard. She and her husband already buried their youngest daughter Ada, which prompted her understandable depression. Bellum’s sleepwalking incidents also required her to sleep separated from her other two daughters, Rose and Ollie, for their protection. Perhaps he should not have left her alone for an out-of-state construction job, but it was hard to turn down work during the Smoot-Hawley Depression.

Initially, Bellum’s sister Esther Smith appears more of a cause for concern, due to her poor housekeeping and erratic behavior. She also assumes Rose simply over-stimulated little Ollie’s imagination with her terrifying tales of the “Grey Man.” However, it turns out someone really is hiding in their barn. That would be Wallace Grady, who claims to be a friend of her husband and a faith healer. Of course, if this were true, Hold Your Breath probably wouldn’t be a horror movie.

Hold Your Breath is definitely a slice of macabre Americana, but its secrets and twists hold little shock or surprise, for even moderately experienced genre viewers. The early scenes are quite impressive, taking visual cues from Andrew Wyeth paintings and Florence Owens Thompson photos. As a result, the audience should readily understand how such a desolate and desiccated environment could drive someone crazy.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach is also surprisingly chilling playing against type as the Night of the Hunter-ish Grady. Unfortunately, Crouse & Joines ill-advisedly usher him off screen for long stretches of time. As partial compensation, Sarah Paulson reliably freaks out as Bellum. You could almost think of this as American Horror Story: Dust Bowl.

Nevertheless, Crouse and Joines have an annoying habit of turning the film’s strengths into shortcomings. At first, they demonstrate the sustaining power of faith and community, before trashing the former for its futility and the latter for its narrowmindedness.

Still, the production and art design teams create a vivid sense of time and place, which is deeply unsettling, even without an evil intruder. Despite a strong start, Crouse and Joines self-sabotage past the point Hold Your Breath could still be partially recommended. For those who still want a taste of the dust-choked atmosphere anyway, it starts streaming today (10/3) on Hulu.