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In a genre overly taken as of late with “elevated” trauma scares, its gritty, skillful menace is a breath of fresh air.

The film often does too much, reaching for too many different sources for its attempted thrills and chills, which results in a mostly scattered experience. However, it has a couple of notable strengths. The first is its handful of tense moments.

For all of the horror subgenres crammed into Hold Your Breath, it never conjures sufficient scares.

All of this furious, empty noise keeps reminding you that you’re watching a cheesy horror film that is not confident enough in the story it’s telling to avoid succumbing to old tricks.

It’s anchored by a typically strong Sarah Paulson performance, to be sure. But “Hold Your Breath” is nonetheless 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.

Sarah Paulson breathes life into a so-so script, but the film's slow pace and lack of strong horror hold it back.

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, Hold Your Breath means that search is ongoing.

When a film is trying to tell three stories at once, it’s bound to get tied up in its own narrative misgivings, and Hold Your Breath is certainly culpable of that.

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.

Hold Your Breath is a strange beast—there aren’t enough thrills for horror heads nor any blood and gore for slasher fans. Even as straight drama, it isn’t entirely successful.