Welcome to Knockout Horror. Today we are going to be reviewing the 2010’s Asylum Horror movie Hold Your Breath. I am fairly sure that the title is supposed to be #HoldYourBreath but they can #EatADick if they think I am putting that in the title bar. Now I know what you are thinking. The early 2010’s weren’t exactly a golden era for slasher movies. When you throw Asylum movies into the mix, on top of that, there really isn’t a ton of hope.
Well, I can happily inform you that you are dead right. This film is beyond awful. In fact, the only positive thing that I can say about this movie is that two of the cast get their boobs out and when that is all a movie has to offer, does it really have anything at all? In fact, you could strike that as a negative, as well, because one of them isn’t Katrina Bowden so who really cares?
Thanks For Nothing Prime Video!
I actually stumbled across this movie because Prime Video has it labelled as a 2024 release. Naturally, thinking if I am going to waste my time with a bad horror movie, it might as well be a recent one. I chucked it on and, low and behold, the cast are dressed like throwbacks from 2008 and they are all brandishing flip phones. Tricked, once again, by Prime’s stupid movie date system.
About ten minutes in my fiancée and I remembered that we had watched this movie 10 years ago and rolled our eyes. The story follows a group of friends heading out to a lake for some camping. When travelling through a graveyard, the token stoner character doesn’t hold his breath, leading to him inhaling the spirit of a deranged killer. Madness follows, some awkward sex scenes happen, and a few people die. The end!
Typical Asylum Movies Crap
Let’s be real for a second, Asylum Movies suck ass. They seriously do. I have been unfortunate enough to cover some of their shark movies lately and they are beyond bad. For those of you who don’t know, Asylum are kings of the Mockbuster. They take famous movies like Paranormal Activity and make low budget, rip off, versions. Their movies are, generally, really bad but they still turn over enough money to make a hearty profit.
Some of their movies follow original IPs and do pretty well. The Sharknado series, for example. Hold Your Breath is one of those original titles and doesn’t rip off a more successful horror movie franchise. It is just its own self contained story. As you might expect, it is all kinds of bad. Cliched characters, predictable plot points, no scares, terrible special effects and poor acting all make up this “taster menu” of awful horror.
The spirit of our lunatic killer hops between characters, each of which takes out a few people before the spirit moves on again. Leading to a bit of an antsy story that never manages to sit still for a second and never really develops beyond farce. It’s silly stuff and somehow manages to not even be “so bad it’s good”. Staying somewhere between laughable and just completely awful throughout.
So Poorly Made
Acting is actually one of the strong points of this movie and that is really saying something. Performances by the “altogether too old to be acting the way they are acting” cast are fairly middling but not as bad as some low budget horror. If nothing else, everyone seems to be having a good time having the chance to play normal people possessed by an evil spirit. They seem to get on pretty well, as well. Randy Wayne and the aforementioned Katrina Bowden are both still acting but many of the cast have vanished into the ether.
Cinematography is horribly average with the 1.78 : 1 aspect ratio making the movie feel even cheaper than it already is. There are tons of goofs with cars switching make and model from scene to scene, inconsistencies in outfits and all sorts of other stuff. Dialogue is juvenile and rather embarrassing, at points, and the special effects are right on par for the usual horse shit that Asylum trots out. There are, obviously, no scares and the kill scenes are seriously lacking in imagination. How many times can one killer utilise a car battery to kill someone? It dull, repetitive, and almost impossible to stay engaged with.
Should You Watch Hold Your Breath?
You absolutely should not watch Hold Your Breath. It is painfully bad with little to nothing to recommend. It is just one of the many generic Asylum horror movies made purely to generate a quick profit. It’s almost like money laundering at this point and the less attention we pay to them the better. Director Jared Cohn should be ashamed of himself in that very specific way that is reserved purely for people who make terrible horror movies and people who stand so close to you while talking that you can smell their breath. Just skip this one.