Film Review: Hoard is an impressive screen debut for star and director alike

Hoard

• Hoard
• ★★★★☆
• Cinema release

Hoard (18s) stars Saura Lightfoot Leon as Maria, a 17-year-old who has been living in foster care with Michelle (Samantha Spiro) ever since she was rescued, as a young child, from the squalor of the home she shared with her hoarding-obsessed mother Cynthia (Hayley Squires).

Now a seemingly well-adjusted teenager, Maria’s long-buried fascination with trash returns when Michelle invites 30-year-old Michael (Joseph Quinn), an ex-foster kid of hers and now a binman, to stay for a few weeks until he can find a place to live with his pregnant girlfriend. 

As Maria processes the sense of loss triggered by Michael’s arrival, she seeks comfort in her abiding sensations of childhood — shame and pain.

Written and directed by Luna Carmoon, Hoard is a gripping drama about the debilitating nature of grief, and the extremes to which self-numbing people will go to experience any sensation at all. 

Set for the most part in cramped, claustrophobic interiors, and deeply unsettling in terms of the intensity of Maria and Michael’s illicit relationship, Hoard is an impressive feature-length debut from Luna Carmoon, and one that announces the arrival of a major talent in the mesmerising Saura Lightfoot Leon.