Hold Your Breath

**_‘B’ horror in the SoCal wilderness delivers the goods_** Seven friends from high school reunite a couple years later for a camping trip in the arid high country north of Los Angeles. Unfortunately, they pass a rural graveyard on the wrong day with horrifying results. "Hold Your Breath" (2012) is basically cabin-in-the-woods horror except that the protagonists are camping out. It combines elements of “Shocker,” “Doom Asylum,” “Death Tunnel” and various low-budget backwoods brutality flicks, such as “Desecrated” (which debuted three years later). While the actors who play Warden Wilkes and Van Hausen (the serial-killer) ham it up, the rest of the cast play it serious and realistic, for the most part. There’s some R-rated gore in the manner of the prologue of “Ghost Ship” and one sex sequence with nudity (just a heads up). Critics argue that there’s bad writing and plot holes, but that’s not true. Everything makes sense once you put the pieces together (that is, makes sense as much as paranormal mumbo jumbo CAN make sense). It’s certainly better thought-out than the gobbledygook in the comparatively lame "The Hollow," "The Night Before Halloween," "Neverknock" and “Stickman.” Erin Marie Hogan stands out on the female front as Natasha while brunette Lisa Younger (Samantha) and blonde Katrina Bowden (Jerry) are also notable. Devanny Pinn is featured in an early bit part as the woman with a scarred face. There are a few noteworthy songs on the soundtrack, including “Fire and Brimstone (Hold Your Breath)” by Chris Cano, sung by Jaymie Valentine, and “Freak” by The Maension. “Vote For Me” by Straight Jackitt is quite good too. All are available to listen to on Youtube. This was made by The Asylum, a company notorious for releasing cheap knockoffs of major releases to steal some of their thunder. The company has certainly put out some dreck (like "30,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and "Mega Piranha"), but they can also surprise you with some worthy low-budget stuff (such as "The Land That Time Forgot,” "Grimm's Snow White" and "6 Guns"). “Hold Your Breath” ranks with the latter, if you can forgive the cartoonish CGI fire. The movie runs 1 hour, 28 minutes, and was shot at a movie ranch in Agua Dulce, which is a 55-minute drive north of Los Angeles, as well as Linda Vista Hospital back in the city. GRADE: B

Decent watch, could watch again, but can't recommend outside of a Bad Movie Night. This is, when it comes to it, a horrible version of "Fallen", so go watch that instead. However, this movie is a lot more fun, with some really bad cg and over emphasized drama. Katrina Bowden ("Tucker and Dale vs Evil") is by far the best acting in this, with Marie Ann Hogan a show stealing second. While an evil body hopping ghost sounds cool, the execution has to be done correctly with the appropriate amount of gravitas and this movie just fails across the board in so many ways. The lines, the fighting, the effects are all bad, but the cast manage to pull off a somewhat endearing dynamic and the journey is just good enough that I would sit through it and laugh at it all again.