Jesse Thomas Cook and Matt Wiele (director)
(studio)
18 (certificate)
98 (length)
02 March 2019 (released)
06 April 2019
Cunningly left to the end of Glasgow FrighFest 2019 The Hoard is a comedy mashing together several reality TV tropes that wasn’t too heavy on the brain though with an observant script from Tony Burgess, Jesse Thomas Cook (who both have parts in the film) with Matt Wiele and directed by Cook and Wiele. For formats that are generally regarded cable/satellite fodder and filler, an awful lot of this was familiar to the viewers in the cinema judging by the laughing.
For their comeback series ‘Extremely Haunted Hoarders’ a team consisting of ghost hunters, a hoarding specialist, psychologist and house clearers has been assembled and set the task of clearing four houses owned mass hoarder Murph Evans (Barry More) who as he comments on the antics is clearly the only one talking any sense.
Ostensibly lead by Sheila Smith (Lisa Solberg) she is very excited to have such a large job, as are the ghost hunters merrily setting up their equipment in one of the houses with a view to recording supernatural activity. The others have different motives or they change as they get deeper into the houses and the other things start to come to light.
The fun of this film is in spotting the tropes for example the ghost hunters getting very animated over the smallest creak, others slavering over items that could potentially be quite valuable and worth a trip to the valuers. Then there is the cynicism of the clearers as they move the rubbish including a load of dead cats in various stages of purification.
Getting the most out of this film with to some degree depend on how familiar you are with these types of show. But even if you aren’t up to speed with all these individual reality shows, their formats are so similar that seen one, seen them all.
The problem is that it isn’t actually that funny. It has its moments but they are sporadic and tend to rely on Murph’s caustic comments about the teams, and the various team members’ talking heads as that’s when their stupidity is laid bare. The horror and the revelations come towards the end and to its credit that does deliver hard.