Just think: Someone at the Asylum offices dug through their piles of Chinese food menus and eventually found the script for “Hold Your Breath” (I’m not including the superfluous hashtag) tucked away. And someone read it thinking this would be the perfect theatrical debut for an Asylum movie. In reality, “Hold Your Breath” should just be another Asylum clunker on DVD, but it warrants a theatrical debut by virtue of the fact that it has minor horror starlet Katrina Bowden attached.
But don’t be fooled, Bowden’s performance is horrible. Bowden has become an actress who, with the right material, can pull in amusing performances. And with the wrong material, she reveals herself to be impossible to watch. “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil?” She’s hilarious and charming. In “Hold Your Breath?” She’s a real ham who can barely deliver any line of dialogue. And for fans of The Asylum (all three of you) hoping to see Bowden shed clothing and take part in the studio’s patented obligatory sex scene, Bowden dodges revealing any and all skin for the camera. Bowden is one of a group of saps who go on a road trip prepared to have a blast. Bowden’s character tells the group of an urban legend that involves holding your breath whenever driving through a cemetery of grave yard, lest you inhale the soul of a demon or some monster. I didn’t know that ghosts were able to be inhaled, but nonetheless she enforces the urban legend.
When the group begins driving conveniently past a cemetery, she screeches for the group to hold their breath, and the obligatory pot head of the pack loses his breath accidentally inhaling the ghost of the film’s bad guy. Years before the group of brain trusts played their game, Bad Guy McKills People was executed on the electric chair and his soul went on to roam the Earth. And possessing random passersby. Of course, the killer’s ghost begins inhabiting the bodies of the travelers as they venture in to an old abandoned insane asylum. Ah, remember the old days traveling with your friends and exploring old abandoned insane asylums where the criminally dangerous patients once lurked? Remember wandering in to the old morgues to diddle your girlfriend on a dusty old table? Glory Days. As the obligatory evil spirit begins passing through various bodies, the spirit takes it upon itself to begin eliminating the travelers one by one through creative methods.
He could easily just inhabit someone’s body and flee to kill another day, but it insists on murdering everyone it can, eventually leading in to a completely ludicrous direction in the narrative where a sacred grave digger is introduced. His revelation of importance toward the killer’s ghost is hilarious. Almost as hilarious as Katrina Bowden’s character tearing someone’s eye out with a food mixer. It’s hard to believe “Hold Your Breath” was the movie that the Asylum decided to pool their money for a limited theatrical release. There’s no way this is worthy of anything other than late night basic cable fodder. It’s another typical Asylum film. Bad acting, terrible writing, a nonsensical villain, meandering narrative, and a title that makes absolutely no sense. Katrina Bowden fans would be wise to look elsewhere for their fix of the blond goddess.