I’ve seen a lot of slice-of-life-type stories be turned into films. Some of them are quite interesting and others aren’t so much. Hoard is one of those movies that had an interesting concept,  but it just wasn’t interesting enough for me to like it. This was an odd story and sometimes odd can be good, but this one wasn’t. There was just something about these characters that didn’t connect with me at all.

Cynthia (Hayley Squires) is a single working mother of one, Maria (Lily Beau Leach, Laura Lightfoot Leon) is her precocious daughter. Together they have a love-hate relationship.  Maria has issues at school getting along with her classmates and teachers. When she comes home she has to make her mom happy. Sometimes that’s hard. More often than not though her mom loves her unconventionally. They like to go out together and shop and so forth. One day an accident happens and her mom falls and gets hurt. She has no other option, but to call to get help for her mother. In doing so the authorities see the situation they are living in and end up placing her with a foster mother. Then the story picks up ten years later.

Ten years later the main character lives a good life with her stepmother and foster sisters. She does what teenagers do most of the time, until she meets a man, Michael (Joseph Quinn) who used to be a foster child at this home. They seem to have a weird attraction to each other even though one is younger than the other.  When she finds out what he does it brings her even closer to him. The problem is he’s got a girlfriend who’s pregnant. This complicates their friendship. 

This story takes place in England, but that country doesn’t have carte blanche on hoarders. We as a country, in fact, have a lot of hoarders. They have even done reality shows about them. Hoarding has been diagnosed as a disease of the mind. People just can’t get rid of their stuff or even worse they keep getting more stuff they don’t need. To the point of insanity. That’s the case with Maria’s mother Cynthia. Wouldn’t you know Maria takes after her mother? This starts to cause issues in her current family life.  

I’m a collector of stuff, mostly books and movies but not to the extent of this woman. Her daughter gets it from her, but it’s more of a situation of the fear of missing out in a way (FOMO) The sexual attraction she has with this man she can’t have triggers her to fall back on what her mother did when she was a child. It’s a sad situation. I understand trying to replace despair or sadness with something. Not like this though. It’s unsanitary and disgusting. Not to mention gross.  I don’t wish anybody would do this as a coping mechanism. 

The cast to me is a bunch of unknowns with Quinn being the one actor I recognized. He’s having a moment right now.  Coming off of Stranger Things, A Quiet Place Day One, Gladiator 2 out in November, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps out next summer. He seems to be the it-boy in Hollywood right now, along with Glen Powell. He brings his usual charm to this role, but it’s the overall story that fails him and the rest of the cast. I’m looking forward to him in his next projects though.

The two actresses, one younger and one older, who plays the main character are good in their performances. I just wasn’t as into her or her story as much as I wanted to be. This character’s journey isn’t one that was moved forward in a positive direction. The film just showed she was like her mother and her mother wasn’t a good person overall. Sure she loved her daughter, but in a tough love kind of way. She couldn’t live without her but she was doing the wrong thing which is why she got taken away. This is as I see it, bad mothering one oh one. We see where the main character gets her weird wild ways from.

Hoard packages a story of a girl who had a rough upbringing who gets a reprieve when she gets put with her foster mother. The problem is when Quinn’s character enters the picture. He gets her mind all messed up. This isn’t quite the coming-of-age story I was hoping for. The acting is pretty good from everybody, it’s the story I wasn’t completely into. I’m sure some people would be interested in this character’s journey, it just wasn’t me. This movie wasn’t my cup of tea despite some of the details of it reminded me of myself.

2 stars

Dan Skip Allen