Warning! This post contains hold your breath spoilers.
Hulu’s new horror-thriller movie, Hold your breathIncludes two mysterious and villainous figures, the Gray Man and Wallace (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and the connection between the two is an interesting one. Hold your breath Released exclusively on Hulu on October 3, 2024, it is set in 1930s Oklahoma during a series of brutal dust storms. There are a number of characters in Hold your breathBut the story focuses mainly 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 is suffering 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 occur throughout the movie. Wallace and the Gray Man still remain the most daunting figures in Hold your breathAlthough, raising questions about how the two are related.
What was Wallace in Hold Your Breath: Real, Imagined or The Gray Man?
Hold your breath Proved to be as cerebral as it is scary because it’s never entirely clear what’s real and what’s going on in Margaret’s head. initially, Hold your breath Seems 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 “Horrible 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 is easy to assume that he is the physical embodiment of the Gray Man. Despite healing from Rose’s bloody nose, brought by the dust storms and correspondingly dry air, it is 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 coat, which is enough to get Margaret to dump Wallace.
After Wallace is kicked out, matters become much more complicated because it becomes clear that The Gray Man and the idea that Wallace might be him are at least partly 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 is thrown off their property, however, his appearances seem to only include Margaret’s hallucinations.
Margaret begins to see Wallace and hear 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 that this is because of Margaret’s history with sleep issues and what appears to be psychosis, although this is left somewhat ambiguous. Margaret is certainly hallucinating at the end of the movie, but it is not confirmed whether it was because she was truly possessed or whether it was completely borne out of whatever condition she was suffering from.
This means It is possible Wallace was the physical embodiment of an evil spirit called the Gray Man or that Margaret imagined everything supernatural What happened in the movie. Even if everything was in Margaret’s mind, that 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 The end cannot give an answer.
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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 could have simply left the property after he was kicked out. If that’s the case, Wallace’s actual location might not be all that important, because that would mean he didn’t pose nearly the level of threat he seemed to (even though he’s not a good guy either way).
If Wallace really is the Gray Man, however, the ending is much more terrifying. The Gray Man certainly wasn’t killed by the end of the movie, although Margaret was in the final dust storm of the movie. This could mean that the Gray Man is still at large, able to possess another. Hold your breath Irreary’s open 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.
The end of Hold Your Breath suggests that the gray man has returned
at the end of Hold your breathRose and Ollie safely escaped their mother, who died in the dust storm (which was orchestrated by Rose in self-defense because she knew her mother was too far gone). The last scene of the movie shows the two sisters on a train, presumably to reunite with their father, who left for work in Philadelphia. In the final scene, Rose looks up and sees some 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 something possessing their mother, he may very well have continued to follow the sisters even after they ran away. But this could also be metaphorical. Rose to see the dust floating through the air could represent the feeling that as much as the two girls can leave their home, the experience will follow them – especially because it cost them their mother.
The real Gray Man legend and how it’s different to hold your breath
The directors of Hold your breathWill Joines and Karrie Crouse discuss the 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 about a man called the Gray Man, who is a spirit who speaks on Pauli’s Island, warning of impending storms – quite different from the figure, who is breathed in and does terrible things. The directors also felt that it was important that the true nature of Wallace, the old man and Margaret’s moods remained uncertain.
The directors also felt that it was important that the true nature of Wallace, the old man and Margaret’s moods remained uncertain.
The directors certainly achieved what they set out to achieve in this respect. The ambiguity surrounding the true existence of the Gray Man and the degree to which Margaret has simply lost touch with reality was one of the more intriguing aspects of the movie. Hold your breath Refusal to give an answer about how Wallace and the Gray Man are connected is part of the fun of this horror thriller.