‘Hold Your Breath’ Trailer: Sarah Paulson Is Stalked by a Sinister Force in the Dust Bowl

Sarah Paulson is traveling back in time for her latest horror installment.

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The “American Horror Story” staple leads thriller “Hold Your Breath,” which is set in Oklahoma in the 1930s amid the region’s horrific dust storms — as if the Depression wasn’t depressing enough. Paulson’s character Margaret is convinced that a sinister presence is threatening her family as she grieves a loss and tries to protect her daughter.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Annaleigh Ashford, Amiah Miller, and Bill Heck co-star.

The film was announced in 2022 and was originally titled “Dust.”

Will Joines and Karrie Crouse (“Westworld”) co-directed and co-wrote the horror film. Crouse’s script was developed in the Sundance Writers’ Lab. The duo previously collaborated on short film “Propagation.”

Paulson told People that she researched the ’30s to embrace its historical accuracy. Part of her education was watching Ken Burns’ “Dust Bowl” documentary to prepare for the role.

“The movie, the unraveling, takes us into a different space, but the reality, the foundational circumstance of the movie, is one of a real American horror,” Paulson said. “This idea that you couldn’t even leave your home, and then even inside your home you couldn’t prevent the dust from getting inside.”

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Paulson said “Hold Your Breath” is “not a slasher movie” — it is more so about the connection between a mother and daughter.

“It is really, at its core, an emotional story about a woman who is desperate to keep her children safe,” Paulson, who also executive produces, said. “When you’re talking about a descent into madness, potentially, you always think about control and some of what happens when the spiral starts to unspool. The minute Margaret can no longer stop the dust from getting inside the house, the minute she can no longer feed her family because the cows got nothing to eat, the more things get more desperate and desperate and scarier and scarier for her in terms of their survival — and the more unhinged she becomes because she can’t do anything about it.”

Alix Madigan and Lucas Joaquin produce the Searchlight release.

Paulson previously starred in Searchlight releases like Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave,” which received the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Sean Durkin’s “Martha Marcy May Marlene.”

“Hold Your Breath” premieres October 3 on Hulu. Check out the trailer below.