“Maintain Your Breath” is a sluggish, monotonous thriller that feels as flimsy and diluted because the mud swirling all through its setting. Making an attempt to thrive on atmospheric vibes, the movie finally stumbles over its personal ambition. Set through the late Thirties Mud Bowl, it incorporates a strong rating and impactful foley results; the sounds of howling winds and raging storms are potent sufficient to overwhelm residence leisure methods. Nonetheless, as soon as the chaos subsides and the movie tries to ascertain a rhythm, it reveals itself as a tacky horror film missing a transparent id.
Administrators Karrie Crouse and Will Joines, working from a script by Crouse, intention to raise the fabric, and the home features of the narrative successfully contribute to the rising paranoia that unfolds halfway by way of the movie. But, “Maintain Your Breath” usually feels prefer it’s spinning its wheels, leaving viewers ready and questioning when one thing will really occur.
Sarah Paulson delivers a restrained efficiency as Margaret Bellum, a mom struggling to guard her two daughters, Rose (Amiah Miller) and Ollie (deaf actor Alona Jane Robbins), whereas their father is away making an attempt to make ends meet. Haunted by the lack of her third daughter, Ada, who succumbed to scarlet fever, Margaret faces the looming presence of the Gray Man—a fictional boogeyman from the women’ bedtime tales, mentioned to have the ability to shape-shift inside the mud.
When actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach seems as Wallace Grady, a touring self-proclaimed man of the fabric, the narrative briefly features intrigue. He claims to know Margaret’s husband and boasts supernatural therapeutic skills, even managing to cease one in all Rose’s extreme nosebleeds.
Whereas Grady is an intriguing character, his function finally looks like a pink herring. Each time Moss-Bachrach shares the display screen with Paulson, “Maintain Your Breath” comes alive, as they have interaction in a compelling debate about one another’s motives and the anomaly of Grady’s arrival.
Sadly, simply because the movie begins to construct momentum, it retreats into clunky haunted home tropes, reminding us that it lacks the inspiration to rise above these drained clichés.
Maybe in a theater, the place the immersive sound design can absolutely envelop audiences, “Maintain Your Breath” would possibly resonate higher. Nonetheless, it finally proves forgettable, fading from reminiscence the second the credit roll. Like mud within the wind.
HOLD YOUR BREATH streams on Hulu Friday, October third: