Hold Your Breath, Short Takes on other cinematic topics
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)
9/25/2024—As the Northern Hemisphere’s transitioned into autumn I’ll need to note to all present and future readers of Film Reviews from Two Guys in the Dark that my wife, Nina, and I have transitioned into our mid-70s which puts us in the autumn of our years too (winter’s a long way off we’re convinced), which means it’s now taking us longer to get do our daily tasks so some changes are now necessary; for me that means putting more time into meals—shopping/preparation—as time management requires me to cut down on the weekly hours I’ve been devoting to this blog. There will still be postings on a weekly basis (most of the time), but the reviews will need to be considerably shorter, maybe with fewer Musical Metaphors if trying to figure out what to use becomes too much of a challenge. I’ll focus on successfully getting to the point in what I write, but extra details and tangents will have to be curtailed. (Damn!) Comments on this revised format are always welcomed.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
As I explored streaming possibilities for this week’s review I was intrigued by what I read about … Breath; after seeing it, I was not only impressed by what I found but was also fascinated by aspects of this story alluding to others I have high regard for. There may be other connections besides the ones I’ll note, yet, for me, the most important ones include The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940) where another Oklahoma Dust Bowl family is made miserable by the horrid conditions of the 1930s due to draught and the constant overwhelming flow of dust from farms gone barren (although in Ford’s classic, based on John Steinbeck’s powerful novel, the Joad family [primarily played by Jane Darwell—Oscars for her as Best Supporting Actress, Ford as Best Director—and Henry Fonda] escapes to different challenges in California whereas in this story Margaret Bellum [Sarah Paulson] won’t leave because she’s staying on the family land with what support her husband, Henry, can send from his construction job back East in order to remain with the grave of her lost daughter, Ava).
We also find allusions to A Quiet Place (John Krasinski, 2018; review in our April 19, 2018 posting) where 2 parents must work diligently to protect their 2 young children from vicious aliens that have invaded our planet, blind beasts with exceptional hearing so the family must constantly avoid making sounds so as to not reveal themselves to the monsters, just as Margaret must try to cover every crack in her dilapidated wooden shack along with her and her girls wearing face masks to prevent what she understands to be a killer ghost from entering their breathing cavities to keep them from being captured by this evil spirit (I can’t help thinking about COVID-19 in our time, the need for masks to help keep it under control, yet the resistance of so many who just want to wish this horror away), and The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton,1955) where an older woman (Lillian Gish) keeps watch, with a shotgun in her lap, over 2 children on the run being stalked by a mad “preacher” (Robert Mitchum) who covets a valuable item the kids have, just as Margaret uses her own shotgun to keep at bay a drifter, Wallace Grady (Ebon Moss-Bachrach)—also claims to be a preacher—who says he worked with Henry but seems to Margaret to be a physical manifestation of The Grey Man, the ghost this family knows about from a book belonging to pre-teen-daughter Rose (Amiah Miller).
However, despite my fascination with ... Breath, I'm like light years away from the OCCU where the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews are a paltry 44% while the Metacritic average score is, surprisingly, a bit higher at 47%. In an effort to see why my reaction is so drastically different from these critics I looked through some reviews, this one from Brian Tellerico of RogerEbert.com as an example of those who found little to appreciate here: “[…] a frustrating work, a sequence of powerful scenes that aren’t tied together with enough tension to make us care. It’s a film filled with moments but no momentum.” Of course, as Sir Isaac Newton theorized so very long ago, “for every action (force), in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction,” so there must be at least a few reviewers out there who, like me, find some value in this film, as for example Hope Madden: ”Paulson’s performance aches with a pain that is particular to a mother, and it’s this broken heartbeat that keeps Hold Your Breath compelling to its conclusion. Its horror is touched with a melancholy suited to the genre. The tension comes and goes, leaving you with less than promised, but the film has enough going for it to make it worth your time.” Ultimately, I’ll have to leave it up to your sensibilities as to whether this story would be intriguing for you or not (if so, it’s on Hulu where you can watch it during their 30 days-free option, then maybe stick around for $7.99 monthly [with ads] or $17.99 [no ads]).
You can get considerably more plot details here, but, briefly building on the foundation I’ve noted above, you’ll find Margaret also has a younger daughter, Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins), deaf and mute after a bout of scarlet fever; Mom’s concerned upon hearing about a drifter who killed a local family, fearful Wallace might be that man, yet finds hope in him when he provides some healing to Rose and the family cow (there’s even some rain after he arrives); then a letter arrives from Henry telling them to be fearful of Wallace, who says he’s The Grey Man even as Margaret uses the shotgun to send him away; ⇒later, she seems to shoot him, but in her sleep-deprived hallucinations she instead kills her sister, Esther Smith (Annaleigh Ashford); with a knife she kills local Sheriff Bell (Arron Shiver) who’d come to take the girls away from her; Rose tricks Mom to go out into a dust storm, then cuts the rope tied to their house as the means to get back to shelter during such a blinding natural attack, leaving Margaret to die, after which the girls take a train to Philadelphia to finally be with their Dad.⇐
In my review last week of It’s What’s Inside I discussed that film as being a sort of mad-scientist story which pushed it firmly into the aspects of the horror genre that deals with humanity defying the domain of the divine, rather than as some have called it, sci-fi; Hold Your Breath would seem to take us even farther, into the dreaded realm of demonic horror (where demons, vampires, werewolves, evil spirits, etc. dwell), yet it turns out to be psychological horror where the real danger is Margaret as she’s progressively losing her mind, in an environment where death easily awaits as “to dust you will return” is made terrifyingly-manifest as the land turns hostile to its inhabitants, so for my usual review-ending Musical Metaphor I see the clear choice of “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas (1977 Point of Know Return album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH2w6Oxx0kQ which also takes Biblical inspirations from Genesis 3:19, along with Ecclesiastes 3:20 and Psalms 18:42 (look ‘em up yourself if you like; I don’t need any more links at this point) as Margaret and her neighbors must confront that “All we do / Crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see / Dust in the wind / All we are is dust in the wind.” Hold Your Breath isn’t fun to watch, but I find it to be mesmerizing; maybe you will too (if not, at least be aware of the reality of COVID in your life and please take precautions).
SHORT TAKES
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
Some options for your consideration: (1) San Quentin Prison to host a film festival; (2) IMDb's October 2024 TV and streaming calendar (341[!] options for you to skim through); (3) Variety's 100 Best Horror Movies of All Time (I’d put their #2 as my #1, move their #100 to much higher on my list, but I admit I haven't seen a lot of what they cite); (4) IMDb's 5 Things to Watch This Week.
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