Warning! This post contains SPOILERS for Hold Your Breath.
Hulu’s new horror-thriller movie,Hold Your Breath, includes two mysterious and villainous figures, the Gray Man and Wallace (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and the connection between the two is a curious one.Hold Your Breathwas released exclusively on Hulu on October 3rd, 2024, and is set in the 1930s in Oklahoma during a series of brutal dust storms. There are a number ofcharacters inHold Your Breath, but the narrative mainly focuses on a mother, Margaret Bellum (Sarah Paulson), who has two living daughters, Rose and Ollie, and one deceased daughter named Ada.
Initially, the movie positions Margaret, Rose, and Ollie as the victims of the insidious Gray Man, but as the movie continues, the truth becomes much more complicated. Margaret, who continues to suffer considerable grief from the loss of her youngest daughter and has obvious sleep and mental health difficulties, is revealed to be increasingly complicit in the violent events that take place throughout the movie. Wallace and the Gray Man nevertheless remain the most daunting figures inHold Your Breath, though, raising questions about how the two are related.
What Was Wallace In Hold Your Breath: Real, Imagined, Or The Gray Man?
Hold Your Breathproved to be as cerebral as it was scary because it was never entirely clear what was real and what was happening inside Margaret’s head. At first,Hold Your Breathseems to introduce a true evil spirit of some kind, the Gray Man. Rose, the older of the two daughters, tells Ollie the story of the Gray Man, saying that he can slip through cracks in homes and, once breathed in, will cause people to do"terrible things."
Wallace is not the man of God he claims to be.
When a man named Wallace appears on their land not long after that, it’s easy to assume he is the physical embodiment of the Gray Man. Despite healing Rose’s bloody nose, brought on by the dust storms and corresponding dry air, it’s evident that Wallace is not the man of God he claims to be. Margaret’s husband, Henry, reveals in a letter that Wallace stole his jacket, which is enough to get Margaret to throw Wallace out.
After Wallace is kicked out, matters become much more complicated because it becomes clear thatthe Gray Man and the notion that Wallace could be him are at least partially in Margaret’s head. Wallace was surely real initially, as both Rose and Ollie can see him, and they physically interact with him. Once Wallace has been thrown off their property, though, his appearances seem to solely comprise Margaret’s hallucinations.
Margaret begins seeing Wallace and hearing his voice in other people, which leads her to nearly shoot her daughter Rose and actually shoot and kill her sister Esther. The movie suggests this is because of Margaret’s history with sleep issues and what seems to be psychosis, although that is left somewhat ambiguous. Margaret was certainly hallucinating by the end of the movie, but it wasn’t confirmed whether that was because she was truly possessed or whether this was entirely borne of whatever condition from which she was suffering.
This meansit’s possible Wallace was the physical embodiment of an evil spirit named the Gray Man or that Margaret imagined everything supernaturalthat occurred in the movie. Even if everything was in Margaret’s mind, though, this still wouldn’t answer the root cause. Her hallucinations could have been due to her slowly losing her sanity over time, perhaps because of the terrible loss of her daughter, or they could have been designed by the Gray Man, if he existed at all (as Wallace or otherwise).Hold Your Breath’sendingdoesn’t truly offer an answer.
Hold Your Breath Review: Sarah Paulson Is Great In Psychological Horror That Doesn’t Earn Its Genre Place
When a film is trying to tell three stories at once, it’s bound to get tied up in its narrative misgivings & Hold Your Breath is certainly culpable.
What Happened To Wallace In Hold Your Breath
Because the true nature of the Gray Man is undefined,Wallace’s future is similarly unknown. Assuming Margaret hallucinated Wallace being the Gray Man, then the real Wallace may have simply departed the property after he was kicked out. If that’s the case, Wallace’s actual location may not be all that important, as this would mean he hadn’t posed nearly the level of threat he seemed to (although he was not a good guy either way).
If Wallace was indeed the Gray Man, though, this ending is much more terrifying. The Gray Man certainly wasn’t killed by the end of the movie, although Margaret was, in the movie’s final dust storm. This could mean that the Gray Man is still at large, able to possess another.Hold Your Breath’seerie open-ended conclusion also leaves a much worse possibility on the table: the Gray Man could have followed Ollie and Rose.
This could mean that the Gray Man is still at large, able to possess another.
Hold Your Breath’s Ending Suggests The Gray Man Has Returned
At the end ofHold Your Breath, Rose and Ollie have safely escaped their mother, who died to the dust storms (which was orchestrated by Rose in self-defense because she knew her mother was too far gone). The final scene of the movie shows the two sisters on a train, presumably to reunite with their father, who has been away for work in Philadelphia. In this final scene, Rose looks up and sees a few specks of dust floating through the air,which suggests the Gray Man has followed them.
Of course, this all hinges on whether the Gray Man was real in the first place. Assuming he was a true evil spirit of some kind who possessed their mother, he very well may have continued to haunt the sisters even after they escaped. This could also be metaphorical, however. Rose seeing the dust floating through the air could represent the sense that as much as the two girls can leave their home, this experience will follow them—particularly given it cost them their mother.
The Real Gray Man Legend & How It’s Different To Hold Your Breath
The directors ofHold Your Breath, Will Joines and Karrie Crouse, discussedthe origins of the Gray Man, revealing that they based the villain on Southern folk tales, drawing inspiration from Joines' upbringing and Crouse’s as well. There is a specific legend regarding a being called the Gray Man, who is a ghost said to roam Pawley’s Island, warning of impending storms—quite different from this figure, who is breathed in and causes one to do horrible things. The directors also felt it important that the true nature of Wallace, the Gray Man, and Margaret’s state of mind remained uncertain.
The directors also felt it important that the true nature of Wallace, the Gray Man, and Margaret’s state of mind remained uncertain.
The directors certainly achieved what they set out to accomplish in that respect. The ambiguity around the true existence of the Gray Man and the degree to which Margaret had simply lost touch with reality was one of the more intriguing aspects of the movie.Hold Your Breath’srefusal to give an answer about how Wallace and the Gray Man are connected is part of the fun of this horror-thriller.
Hold Your Breath
Cast
In 1930s Oklahoma, during the devastating dust storms, a woman becomes convinced that a sinister presence is threatening her family.
