Hoard

It’s a film that heads to the shadowy spots that most filmmakers on this sceptred isle don’t even know exist; every frame exuding both a breathless confidence and a warped visual literacy which suggests a director on a mission to do anything to make an audience feel something – which is completely refreshing to behold.

Though at times squirmingly unpleasant, Hoard is never a drag. The insolence of the filmmaking and the artlessness of the leads energize a plot of stunning recklessness and unexpected humor.

Getting along with Hoard requires playing along with it too. But it’s easier to warm to than you might imagine, thanks to how well it captures the half-dazed tone and flow of early 1990s teenage life.

The sometimes-rapid shifts in tone, even within the same scene, are aided to tremendous effect by the magnetic, fearless performance from Saura Lightfoot Leon.

Carmoon’s depiction of trauma, grief and mental health in crisis as a kind of putrid, repellent stench that clings to the skin, stings the eyeballs and turns the stomach makes for a queasily insalubrious viewing experience. Hoard is a film I admire, but struggle to like.

Luna Carmoon’s grimy study of loss might ultimately be too strange for its own good. Nevertheless, this debut boldly announces the arrival of one of Britain’s most promising new filmmakers.

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.