As good an actress as Sarah Paulson is, she can't make this film anything special.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Nov 3, 2024

As credulity is increasingly strained, all the good performances in the world can't offset the tedium.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 25, 2024

As fully committed as she is, even Paulson struggles to elevate [Hold Your Breath's] thin and underdeveloped material, which would probably be better suited to an episode of a horror anthology series.

| Oct 20, 2024

Despite Sarah Paulson's agonized performance, this is a frustrating, forgettable psychological horror story cloaked in a malevolent quasi-supernatural plot.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Oct 19, 2024

Less successful is first-time feature directors Crouse and Joines’s handle on its genre storytelling...as much as a grounded Paulson commits, this cycle of repetitive fake outs manages to make this unique horror setting feel utterly forgettable.

| Oct 16, 2024

Paulson's performance is masterful, but she needs better material to work with.

| Original Score: C+ | Oct 12, 2024

It's a fine example of slow-burn and character-driven horror storytelling.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 9, 2024

This film, despite its strong cast, seems to struggle with feeling like it needs to stay true to the historical accuracy of 1933 Oklahoma.

| Oct 9, 2024

For a debut feature, this dustbowl survival flick shows undeniable promise. But committed performances and striking cinematography can’t stop a shaky narrative crumbling at the last. 

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 8, 2024

Hold Your Breath is a perfect entry to the sleepover genre. It’s spookier than the offerings of some other streaming services (like the Netflix Fear Street trilogy), but likely won’t be responsible for any nightmares.

| Oct 6, 2024

The effects crew provides so much realism you might be hearing the wind in your ears and, perhaps, tasting the dust in your mouth for hours after viewing.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 5, 2024

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.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 5, 2024

A richly textured performance by Sarah Paulson anchors this slow-burning thriller that lacks a compelling story to match its ominous atmosphere.

| Oct 5, 2024

Hold Your Breath blends the stuff of paranoid thrillers, supernatural horror and domestic drama into a reasonably effective mashup.

| Oct 5, 2024

Paulson’s commitment is unwavering, and it’s refreshing to see her in genre material a little more grounded than what the various American Horror Stories have given her, but she’s an actor in search of better material and, sadly.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 4, 2024

Paulson’s portrayal of a mother unravelling with the best of intentions is genuinely distressing... In spite of the very different settings, this aspect of the film is reminiscent of The Babadook, which also features a mother battling a storybook monster.

| Oct 4, 2024

Elements of psychological, supernatural, and survival horror are incorporated, yet never coalesce into a cohesive story, despite the film boasting a strong central performance and a commitment to historical detail.

| Original Score: C+ | Oct 4, 2024

Where the movie goes wrong is that it doesn’t build to anything interesting.

| Oct 4, 2024

There comes a point in Hold Your Breath in which even Margaret’s children begin to wonder if the scary shapes in the dust are real or if their mother is imagining them.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 4, 2024

The scenes between Paulson and Ashford as sisters, trading between who is steady and who is weakening, are especially engrossing.

| Original Score: B | Oct 4, 2024