Hold Your Breath (2024 film)

Hold Your Breath is a 2024 American psychological horror-thriller film directed by Karrie Crouse and Will Joines, and written by Crouse. It stars Sarah Paulson, Amiah Miller, Annaleigh Ashford, Alona Jane Robbins, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.

The film premiered in the Special Presentations section at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2024, followed by a streaming release as a Hulu original film through Searchlight Pictures on October 3, 2024. It was released internationally on Disney+ as well.

Plot

In 1930s Oklahoma, Margaret Bellum lives on a formerly successful farmland, now razed by the Dust Bowl. She works alongside her two daughters, teenaged Rose and her younger sister Ollie, who became deaf and mute after a bout of scarlet fever. Her youngest daughter, Ada, died due to the illness, causing a grieving Margaret to experience violent sleepwalking episodes, which she prevents by taking sleeping pills. The family patriarch, Henry, has moved away to Philadelphia to take a construction job, and though he wanted Margaret and the girls to join him, Margaret declined due to her unwillingness to leave Ada's grave behind. One night, Rose reads "The Grey Man" to Ollie, the story of a man who kills his family, but is overtaken by a dust storm and perishes; he can enter victims' bodies and control them.

During a weekly sewing circle, Margaret learns that a drifter allegedly broke into a neighbor's house, tied up the father, and murdered the rest of the family.