HOARD TBC

Trash and carry…

★★★★★ OUT 17 MAY CINEMAS

Can you cling to the past by hoarding detritus, fragments of histories lost? Such is the premise for this visceral feature debut from British writer-director Luna Carmoon. A social-realist tale of sublimated grief and desire, Hoard embeds messy emotions in unruly sounds, images and performances with a lingering power.

As a kid, Maria (Lily-Beau Leach) lives with mum Cynthia (Hayley Squires), a troubled hoarder of trash who suffers a tragic demise. A decade on, raised by loving foster mum Michelle (Samantha Spiro), 18-year-old Maria (Saura Lightfoot-Leon) bottles up her grief. But the cork bursts when memories of Cynthia are revived, just as Michelle’s older charge Michael (Joseph Quinn) drops by.

As Maria embarks on volatile sexual escapades with Michael, she also begins dumpster-diving for waste, heading for a meltdown. Carmoon renders this looming psychosexual implosion with a startlingly tactile force – you can almost taste the spit and shepherd’s pie exchanged on screen. While Stranger Things’ Quinn is terrific, Lightfoot-Leon’s feral performance fuels the film’s wayward energies, recalling a young Samantha Morton. But Hoard summons its own ragged empathies. Some images seem forced, as if Carmoon couldn’t bear losing them yet couldn’t justify their presence, but that’s a small quibble for a debut so disquietingly forceful. Even if Hoard is overstuffed, its purgative thrust feels tough, tender and true.

THE VERDICT Carmoon’s heady, tangible drama is a debut to reckon with, galvanised by Lightfoot-Leon’s electric lead.

How many sofas do you think you can fit into this room?

BOY KILLS WORLD 18

Silent but deadly…

★★★★★ OUT 26 APRIL CINEMAS

Do the Skarsgård brothers share the same trainer? You have to wonder given Bill Skarsgård’s shredded physique in Moritz Mohr’s gonzo actioner, a muscular morphosis to match his older sibling Alexander’s ripped build in The Northman.

As a deaf orphan on a one-man mission to avenge himself on the totalitarian regime he blames for offing his family, Skarsgård’s Boy lets his brawn do the talking in a gleefully bonkers blend of The Hunger Games and The Raid. Or he would, were his every move not accompanied by H. Jon Benjamin (Bob’s Burgers) as an inner voice modelled on the narrator of Boy’s favourite childhood video game.

As that precis suggests, this is a film where pretty much anything goes. A television show where dissidents are executed by a breakfast cereal’s costumed mascots? Sure. Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery as a murderous enforcer? Why not. Gory fight scenes utilising cheese graters and Gatling guns? Bring it on. And while we’re at it, let’s have a lip-reading gag involving a growling rebel (Isaiah Mustafa) whose every utterance Boy garbles into gibberish (‘Dodo buns!’).

True, there comes a point when the wackiness gets wearying. Yet one can’t deny Boy Kills World has a delirious energy to it that’s not dissimilar to the John Wick franchise, a series Skarsgård exited at the end of its fourth chapter.

THE VERDICT Bill kills in a Sam Raimi-produced actioner that’s probably best partnered with a non-anatomical six-pack.