Hold Your Breath (2012)

“You call that a friend? He was ready to rip you a new asshole with a pitchfork!”  Happy Maniac Monday ghosts and ghouls!  Tonight’s murderous feature was brought to the silver screen in 2012 by director Jared Cohen and is entitled Hold Your Breath.

The overall gist of the flick is that if you don’t hold your breath when passing a cemetery, evil spirits (that are ‘so bad even hell won’t take them) can possess your body. As a group of college kids rolls past a cemetery on their way to go camping, one of them takes a large toke on a pipe while the rest hold their breath. He gets possessed – and wackiness ensues.

Obviously after the possession, the viewer is completely aware that these murders are coming. The opening of the movie shows a mass murderer being electrocuted, and we see that the prison he was sentenced to death in is now abandoned, so we can only assume it is his wicked soul doing the possessing (which is later confirmed).

The death toll begins immediately in the flick, and doesn’t stop throughout its entirety. Most of the deaths are done with ingenuity – we have a girl being ripped in half with chicken wire, a cop that gets his jiblets fried when jumper cables are attached to his pants and the engine – he tries to get away from the guy pouring gas on him, starts the car, and gets immediately fried.  It also becomes clear by the third death that this director clearly is enamored with eyeball gouging. Almost every character gets something shoved into their eyeball at one point or another.  Though I’ll be honest the death by cake mixer could have been a bit more intriguing. I mean…really? After those two awesomely gruesome deaths?  But here I go getting off track.

Anywho, perhaps the best character in the film is the old man McBride, who knows a little too much about the insanity happening at the graveyard. He has the most excellently hilarious lines: “Are you paying somebody to help you misunderstand me?” – L O L. Portrayed decently by Steve Hanks, he is hands down the most memorable character in this film. Aside from him, the acting was decent, though none of the actors were people I recognized from other features.  Aside from McBride, the best actor in my humble opinion was the second to get possessed - Tony (But with a real name like Brad Slaughter, should anyone be surprised by this revelation? haha! You just can't make this stuff up!).  

The cinematography was also done well, there wasn’t too much use of ‘shaky camera’ technique, and some of the shots of fog in the dark cemetery were shot very well. The soundtrack wasn’t super memorable, but it was decent and went along with the action of the flick.  The gore…well…CGI is definitely NOT my preferred style of gore.  It has its place, but personally I think this movie could have used a lot less of it. The girl getting cut in half, for example, could have been much more realistic with handmade gore. The specter battle, however, pretty much required CGI to pull off. It was decent, if not a hair campy.  I will say that what WAS done by hand in this film looked great - the girl's scars on her face in the beginning and most of the eye gouging were what appeared to be handmade gory goodness. So I was at the very least somewhat satiated. 

But I know what you’ve been waiting for - so here comes the ratings fiends!  Body Count: 7 or 9, depending on if you think that McBride dies at the end (doesn’t exactly show this), as well as the last female left (whom we also have to draw our own conclusions about). Number of killers? Well…you could I suppose technically say one (the spirit of the murderer) but I totaled up each person who killed while possessed as well – so my total came out to seven.  Boob count? Two. Cheap thrills? Two. Actual creeps endured? One. Raven’s Scream Meter says: 3 out of 5 Screams. I’d say this is worth a watch, but try not to take it too seriously or expect too much of it or you may wind up disappointed. Feel free to leave comments and opinions below, and stay spooky my fiends!