Hold Your Breath could have very well been a season of American Horror Story, set around 1930’s Oklahoma and the terrifying dust storms. My major reason for saying this is, of course, Sarah Paulson, who needs no introduction, and spearheads Karrie Crouse and Will Joines’ psychological horror. Paulson is expectedly terrific, as always, and the film—despite borrowing from many things like The Witch to The Babadook to Midnight Mass—holds its ground till the very end. It has a very shocking climax that many of you might not see coming, although it makes total sense. My agenda is to dissect Hold Your Breath in this article.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens in the Movie?
Margaret wakes up in a pasture full of tall grass and listens to the happy giggling sounds of her kid nearby. The bliss is short-lived because that giggle turns into worrisome coughing, and within a second, Margaret finds herself in the middle of a ferocious dust storm, with her daughters screaming for help. All of it is a dream, of course, but also works as a warning sign about things to come. And those things are not good at all.
The year is 1930 in Oklahoma. In the middle of nowhere, Margaret lives with her two daughters, Rose and Ollie. Her husband Henry has been away for a while, traveling to make money and seeking a better life for the family. Not too long ago, the family suffered a grave tragedy—when Rose and Ollie’s sister Ada died helplessly. There’s this sickness going around, thanks to an extreme level of dust pollution. The entire area has turned into a dust bowl where people are trying their best to not inhale or consume dust. Unfortunately, things are not looking very hopeful for Margaret’s cousin Esther, who lives nearby, and her sons, Jacob and Thomas. All of them are having a really bad time with the coughing, especially the two boys. There’s far worse things going on, though. At a community meeting, Margaret hears about this drifter who has apparently murdered (and then eaten) an entire family. He tied up the father and made him watch his daughters getting murdered. Strangely enough, nobody has seen this drifter, and there’s this speculation that the father may have done it all by himself. Several people in the community confirm that the man was not quite himself lately.
Who Is The Gray Man?
The gray man is a recurring lore in this narrative. We first get to know about the supernatural being from Margaret reading the stories to her daughters. It’s not real though, just a horror story where this evil entity made of dust can slip through the cracks of the house, make you breathe him in, and then do terrible things. While Rose understands this is just a story, Ollie appears to be genuinely scared.
When Esther makes a desperate attempt to leave the place, her cart meets an accident, and Jacob dies in the middle of a storm. Margaret realizes that there’s no way to get out of the dust bowl. Spooky things start happening at the house, until a mysterious man emerges from underneath the barn. The man, who calls himself Wallace, happens to know Henry, and once he’s magically able to stop Rose’s nosebleed, he becomes a part of the household. Margaret and her daughters’ lives get better, and it appears that Wallace has even brought some rain with him. Too bad he turns out to be a rotten apple, as in one of the most dramatic scenes of Hold Your Breath, Margaret finds out this man has stolen Henry’s jacket and his money. Wallace is understandably thrown out of the house, and from there on, the story goes into the supernatural territory where the gray man feels like a very real thing, after all.
Does Rose Kill Margaret?
For the longest time, Hold Your Breath makes you (and Rose) believe that Wallace is the real evil. He’s, in fact, the gray man from the story who’s practically terrorizing Margaret and her daughters. From getting inside the house as he pleases (because he can’t be stopped, obviously) to attempting to set Rose and Ollie on fire—he has done everything to make this family’s life a nightmare. Needless to say, it has affected Margaret so much. Rose and Ollie are no exception either.
I wouldn’t say the big reveal of Hold Your Breath is particularly surprising. You can actually see it coming. Of course, Margaret had to be the one doing all of it. She was losing it with each passing minute, and by the end of the movie, Rose realizes that her mother has gone bonkers and there is no way she can be saved. The only reason Rose had to kill her mother was it came down to either she (and Ollie) live and, in the near future, have the opportunity to get the hell out of the dust bowl; or she joins her mother’s suicide mission, where Margaret believes all of them will be joining Ada. What also makes it a must-do thing for Rose is Margaret going totally unhinged and killing the good reverend, who was checking up on the family’s well-being only. I don’t think Margaret wanted to shoot Esther (she thought it was Wallace/TGM), who became a very tragic casualty after getting her life back on track. Keeping all this in mind, Rose killing her own mother actually makes a whole lot of sense. I especially liked how she does it—by letting Margaret out in the storm and closing the door on her. The cutting of rope (which they use to not get lost during storms) has a deeper meaning here—it’s basically Rose severing her ties with her mother.
What Does The Gray Man Symbolize?
Early on in Hold Your Breath, we see Rose having a conversation with Margaret about the latter doing certain things while sleeping. It gets evident that Margaret suffers from sleepwalking and she has the tendency to do questionable things during. That was the clue for us to deduce what was really happening. Margaret was, in fact, going down a rabbit hole inside her head. The gray man lore only acted as a catalyst in that. In a way, the gray man is the representation of Margaret’s mental illness. As the story goes by, it keeps getting stronger, and Margaret starts losing herself. It gets absolutely worse when she puts a face to the gray man, which is obviously that of Wallace. It’s very much possible that the same thing happened with the man whose family got killed by the drifter, who was probably not real.
