In short: The Hoard (2018)

This Canadian horror comedy directed by Jesse Thomas Cook and Matt Wiele and co-written (has also acts) by the same Tony Burgess who wrote the novel the great and wonderful Pontypool was based on, concerns the misadventures of the cast of the reality TV show “Haunted Hoarders”. The show’s shtick of course mixes the terrors of hoarding reality TV crap with the idiocy of paranormal reality TV nonsense. The members of the crew lose the grip on their respective limited sanities, and encounter their doom in form of three hoarder houses and one hidden, undead uncle.

As a parody of bullshit reality TV, the film has its best moments when it uses the inherent absurdity of the format for jokes good and bad; it’s generally aiming pretty low, so if you hope for any kind of insight beyond “reality TV is inherently absurd and made by people of dubious mental and moral state”, you are a bit out of luck here. As a whole, the film seems more at home making jokes about bodily fluids and is – a bit ironically - aiming at the cheap seats as much as the TV formats it is making fun of. Yes, I am complaining that a reality show parody has little substance, but then, the film’s 98 minute run time does stretch the premise really a bit too thin for its own good, and the material’s not that funny. In part, this has to do with the film not really thinking too much about its premise, so it is never quite clear how a show would actually mix the anti-hoarding stuff and the paranormal investigation bits, leaving lots of opportunities for more complex jokes, and ways to go off into more involving directions, by the wayside.

On a formal level, I had my problems with the strange way the film treats the camera and sound people, who sometimes seem to be actual physical presences, and sometimes, particularly during the climax, are definitely not. Sure, not pretending the camera’s there is part and parcel for reality TV, but once the killing starts, the camera and sound guys surely should find gory ends, too?


Don’t get me wrong, while I’m not completely happy with The Hoard, I did have some fun with it – it’s certainly technically competent indie horror, the cast is just as competent (and Burgess as the show’s fake psych doctor turns out to be a natural comedian), and it’s perfectly watchable.