Hold Your Breath (2012)

Too much of everything

Overrated and overhyped

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Did anyone else watch this just to hear Fire and Brimstone performed by Jaymie Valentine?? Lmao... Movie was bad, as was the acting... That song was the only good thing about it... Loved her version of it!That being said,I wasn't expecting much from it and it was entertaining enough for the time while I was in the mood for something like this lol... These types of movies are almost a tradition in our family around Halloween time. The more campy the better lol.

Asylum produces some nice films that are low budget and almost spoof like in a way. When I rent a movie by them, I pretty much know what I'm getting. When I come here and read the reviews by people who didn't like it, it makes me wonder why they even rented it in the first place. Titanic and Gone With the Wind this is not. You have a micro- budgeted horror film about a spirit that possesses you if you don't hold your breath while driving by a graveyard. Shouldn't that be a hint for you?Hold Your Breath is one of the better straight to video horror films I've seen. It doesn't do everything right but it does a lot more right than wrong. To start off, the rapport between the actors playing the college kids is really nicely done. The cast and the set up reminded me a bit of Friday the 13th Part 3 or 4. You had the dating couple, the stoner, the hot single chick and a couple of others tossed in. The script, written by Geoff Meed (who is more known as a B actor) sets it all up nicely to begin. These young adults are off to a weekend getaway and the guy who organized insists on no cell phones for the weekend. Just a cool weekend of camping and being at one with nature. Back in the 50's a mass murderer/rapist/religious loonie was put to death in an electric chair. His spirit lives on as it is too malicious to even be accepted in Hell. The spirit can pass into different people as it chooses to and those people become possessed by the killer.Yes, the story has been done before and it has kind of been done better in some movies. But what this one has going for it is some great old school Tom Savini/Rick Baker like makeup effects and the set design is fantastic. Night time is lit ominously by the moon, graveyards have fog drifting by the tombstones and the sanitarium where the execution took place is creepy and vast and claustrophobic all at the same time. There are some great effects as well highlighted by a girl being tied to a tree and getting cut in two by barbed wire. I like effects like this, they remind of the older films like The Howling and Friday the 13th. The Saw films are good and the gore is well done but you can see where the CGI takes over. Sometimes good old fashioned prosthetics and make-up is just better.Katrina Bowden and Randy Wayne are the two best characters and they do quite well here. The rest of the cast is fine as well. Bowden is almost too gorgeous and they have her running around in Daisy Dukes and a flimsy shirt all throughout the film, which of course is apropos for a horror film.I would have given the film even higher marks if it weren't for some silly and unnecessary plot pieces, like two characters running away scared from another when she is but a 110 pound woman. That just seemed strange. And I didn't care for the ending. But all in all, it was a good effort.7/10

After acting strangely during a weekend getting together, a group of friends learn they've invoked an urban legend by allowing a deceased serial killer to possess them on the anniversary of his death and must find a way of stopping their friends before they're killed.This was a pretty enjoyable effort with a lot to really like about it. There's some pretty clever ideas at play in here, mainly in the way it goes about tying in the urban legend for possession and how it works in the future, as well as the way in which they're forced to bring the past into the whole equation and how they're going to deal with the spirit. The scenes in the abandoned prison are a lot of fun with plenty of suspenseful moments with it's creepy atmosphere, and the action sequence with the oncoming storm makes for a rather tense moment, as does the chase through the cemetery at night and the final confrontation in the woods which has a lot to like about it. Coupled with it's high gore quotient and graphic kills, there's a lot to like here and manages to overcome it's few flaws, namely in the fact that there's not a great deal of intelligence among the group here which constantly puts them in danger for no reason than to keep the scene going, failing to recognize what's going on around or just plain refusing to go along with how to save themselves after being told what to do in avoid that, and it grows tiresome after a while. As well, it's pretty much all inference as to what's going on, since this doesn't reveal anything straight-out and gets a little confusing as to what's going on. Otherwise, this is a pretty enjoyable effort.Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence, Nudity and drug use.

Total waste of my time if I could get my money back for renting this movie I would but acting was horrible plot was stupid and not to mention the fake animated fire, and dude that helped them towards the end of the movie said he didn't have a car but when he let them escape somehow he pops up with a Toyota, than when there leaving driving down the road kept switching back and forth between the Toyota they escaped with and the Chevy they went to the camp grounds in, like every 5 secs they were playing Chinese fire drill, oh and one more thing the egg beater part when the chick took out dude eye, a 2 year old could have seen the egg beater was like 5 inches away from dudes eye and you can tell that when she left and he's laying on the floor you can obviously tell it was a plastic prop or something on his eye, the movie was just altogether terrible and the director either shouldn't have even made this movie or did one hell of a better job instead of half assen it, please for the love of god do not try to make a sequel and if you do, have someone else direct it because this movie was terrible and awful and a waste of money