Hoard

It will turn out to be a visceral nightmare for anyone with OCD, so it's best to keep your distance.

Now keeping my courteous forewarning aside, this just didn't hit the mark for me, even though I get what they were trying to do, and what they have had in their minds.

A lot of it comes down to the inefficient execution which focuses way too much on visuals and forgets to build a strong emotional groundwork.

Even though I like their intent to highlight 'hoarder disorder' and them providing a voice to those affected by it.

But the real question is, did the story do enough to foster compassion for people dealing with such issues? Or at least help others understand their off-beat mindset better?

I don't think so.

I enjoyed every second of it so why would I rate it lower? I understood everything I saw and I understood the character of Maria and the way grief worked on her and made her do certain things. Joseph looked absolutely scrumptious. I guess you either really like it or really hate it there's no in between.

Hoard is a 2023 Semi-Biographical exploration of unprocessed grief and its potential long term effect on an adolescent.

It's the feature film debut of Luna Carmoon whose 2020 short film Shagbands I watched prior to Hoard. Both Shagbands and Hoard are gritty dramas taking place in the east end of London with a theme of growing up as a young girl in an area of deprivation. Where Hoard differs however is in its use of surrealist techniques in a few of the scenes. Arguably the easiest thing to write about is your own life but it's in the more surrealist moments where the lines between reality and fiction are blurred. This both helped to keep me on the edge of my seat as a viewer but also added to the main characters sense of confusion and dread as parts of her childhood memories start to come back to her.

The film spends a good 30 minutes at the start introducing us to a young Maria (around eight years old) and her mother Cynthia. The pair clearly have a deep bond however Cynthia has a severe hoarding problem and it takes a toll on Maria's school life. Half an hour of set up may seem excessive to some however it's crucial to the rest of the narrative that you buy into the two characters strong connection.

Fast forward a few years and now 16 year old Maria is living with her foster mother. All seems well until another previously fostered child (now an adult) Michael comes back to stay. The pair develop a relationship the type of which Maria hasn't felt since the relationship she had with her mother. This brings up a whole host of emotions that the majority of us would struggle to deal with, let alone a 16 year old.

If I had any criticisms it's that the film tries to do so much that it couldn't possibly manage to answer all the questions that I had by the time the credits rolled.

Oh and fair warning there is a Saltburn esc yucky scene.

That being said, Hoard is a striking debut that has a very real and emotional backbone and is levelled off with this surrealist, visually intriguing style. Luna Carmoon is definitely a director with a big future.

In her directorial debut Luna Carmoon captures extraordinarily how we can be connected to our positive childhood memories and experiences even when they can be seen as strange and even traumatic by some. Essentially "Hoard" tells the story of love - platonic, friendly, physical or parental, and the way it can affect our behaviour and also our personality. But Carmoon decided to show slightly disturbing and sometimes disgusting side of connecting and bonding of two people, which made the whole film more gripping in my opinion. I found this concept intriguing and although there were some themes I would have wished to be more developed, I am really interested to see what comes out next from the mind of Carmoon. I must highlight the debut performance of Saura Lightfoot Leon in the leading role whose stubborn, emotional and fragile yet brave Maria carried the narrative. In the supporting role the new rising star Joseph Quinn proved that he has the talent even for more artistic approach in film-making than just for mainstream production like Stranger Things (his break-out role).

An examination of trauma, this film is relentlessly tense as the vulnerability of the main characters means they're constantly on the edge. It left me asking questions of the effect of trauma on relationships and the individual, which I suspect was the aim.

The actors carry themselves faultless, the breakout young star a particular highlight, though the script falls flat a few times. The direction is stupendous - the way they turn a hot iron in to a menacing, predatory presence was a favourite of mine

Sometimes it's incoherent which makes the film difficult to follow scene by scene, and can fall in to itself, but the intensity never abides and all you really want is for these damaged people to turn out OK.