This review was originally part of our coverage of the 2023 BFI London Film Festival.
It’s a very rare thing to have intimate, character-focused dramas make us nauseous, squirm, and take in imagery we hope to never see again. That’s stuff for snuff films and horror, right? Wrong as that’s where we are taken with Luna Carmoon’s debut feature, Hoard, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival before coming home to London. With it, she goes to places where films like these are usually too afraid to go. Settings are covered in filth, rat kings, and so much spit you could drown. Carmoon is focused on delivering visuals that will shock and disgust. But underneath it all lies a layer of weighty material, waiting to be used to tell a better story. Instead, these images are in the foreground of a compelling tale of grief, mental illness, and the past catching up with you when they should be in the background.
What Is ‘Hoard’ About?
The first thirty minutes of Hoard is where it’s at its best. We’re introduced to the manic but loving world of mother Cynthia (Hayley Squires) and her young daughter Maria (Lily-Beau Leach). Cynthia will use any means necessary to bring magic to her daughter’s life, swinging her around in a stolen shopping trolley as they scavenge rubbish bins for hidden treasure. It’s apparent right away that Cynthia is not mentally stable, and that’s before you even see their home. The title card timing is impeccable — the camera pans out to reveal that Cynthia is an extreme hoarder, and she and Maria live in squalor. The house is full of make-shift decorations from trash; you can barely see any of the floor as it’s covered in cardboard, bin bags, and yes, rat kings. Maria must bring home every last bit of waste from her school lunch, including tin foil made into balls. It’s hard to watch but what makes it easier is the intense bond between this mother and daughter. “Catalog of love” is what Cynthia calls her affliction; all these pieces of rubbish are her way of telling her daughter that she loves her and will do absolutely anything for her.
The film is strongest when it offers insights into an extreme mental illness that rarely gets the movie treatment. But when Cynthia’s condition physically caves in on her, Maria is sent away to live with a foster mother, Michelle. Hoard then jumps to Maria (Saura Lightfoot Leon), now 17 or 18, finishing school. She still lives with Michelle, whom she calls “Mum.” She laughs and smokes joints with her best friend, and seems to be doing well given such a traumatic event so early in her life. But when Michelle’s former foster child, Michael (Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn), who is nearly 30, comes to stay for a while, they descend into a folie à deux, opening up the wound of Maria’s past, something that she has not dealt with and is destined to repeat.
‘Hoard’ Mishandles Mental Illness
Just when we are offered a tangible emotional core, it’s ripped out, leaving so many holes that are never sewn back up. After this time jump, Hoard spends its runtime in the shadow of its opening. Carmoon crafts such a tender love story between mother and daughter, even when against an environment that might make you feel physically sick. It’s an interesting visual juxtaposition. We’ve become used to seeing depression, violence, and hopelessness in filthy places, but Carmoon subverts that and finds the beauty in the disgusting. But when the film changes lanes to teenage Maria’s descent into the same sickness that took her mother away from her, it leans too heavily into these visceral images, pulling the seams apart on what could have been a compelling look at mental illness. Hoard has all the pieces, it just keeps putting them in the wrong places.
There are lengthy scenes of food fights, Maria and Michael playing bull and matador, and the pair of them repeatedly spitting into her hand until it becomes a mountain of saliva, and then they lick it away. Again, I have to hand it to Carmoon for crafting these sequences, because they are striking, but do they have any real meaning? The idea of Maria going years seemingly unmoored by her mother’s illness to falling victim to the exact same fate should have remained at the heart of the film. And yet Carmoon just seems more interested in shocking us visually than offering a deeper exploration into the weighty themes it presents.
While this is Maria’s story, it all begins with her mother. Hoard repeatedly picks up and drops the character of Cynthia, may it be her presence or her memory. It uses Michael as an odd and unfitting substitute, and his character development is completely unearned. He serves to rejig Maria’s trauma, and their shared mania takes away from what Hoard is supposedly all about: the inheriting of mental illness.
‘Hoard’ Features Great Performances From Hayley Squires and Joseph Quinn
The acting is superb from every single player, but Hayley Squires as Cynthia is an absolute homerun. She single-handedly balances the intense love of a mother with a misunderstood illness, having absolutely no one to help her. She speaks to young Maria in their own language, with sing-songs and limericks. She makes something as banal as dinner in front of the TV feel like Disneyland, and there is no doubt that she loves Maria, despite subjecting her to an unhealthy lifestyle. Newcomer Saura Lightfoot Leon is given a lot to do and she takes it in her stride. She is in no way hesitant to take Maria to the strange outer world of isolation and mental suffering, it’s just a shame that it’s not given more care. While Michael is an underwritten and almost unneeded character (Maria going at this windy road alone might have given the themes more room to breathe), Quinn as the maniacally pathetic man-child is a firm statement that he can do much more than hammer on a guitar. While the script is shaky for his character, he commits to every last bit, warts and all.
The ending of Hoard backtracks on all the hard work it has put in. It glosses over the heavy material it has thrown in your face, covered in spit and cottage pie, to clumsily tie a stained bow on a gift that isn’t wrapped. While it is an interesting commentary on how mental illness can in no way be handled alone, it trivializes the journey we’ve been on — as if these types of conditions can be solved with a cup of tea and a hand on the shoulder. It mishandles Maria’s story, one that is about both grief and mental health, but it seems to think that these topics are interchangeable. Maria’s grief and falling further into hoarding are yes, absolutely tied, but deserving of their separate nuances. In the moments where grief should come into focus, it jumps over it, not allowing Maria to fully come to terms with the fact that the person who was at the center of her world is gone forever. That is until the ending but by then it’s too late. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and not because you’ll be leaving the cinema feeling queasy.
Luna Carmoon is certainly a director to keep an eye on. This is an audacious feature debut that shows a director champing at the bit to throw even more bizarre imagery at you. Fantastic performances abound, with Leon an up-and-coming star and Quinn firmly breaking out of the Eddie Munson shadow. However, its mishandling of mental illness and an unearned ending are too apparent to be ignored. Carmoon establishes a plot that could have been great, but becomes too caught up in the visuals of it all, and the script pays the price.
Hoard is now playing in theaters in the U.S. Click below for showtimes near you.
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