Things get pretty horrible in Hoard, the daring, audaciously unpleasant debut from English filmmaker Luna Carmoon, in which an unconventional and upsetting childhood comes back to haunt a teen. It’s a film that confronts the way familial and romantic relationships can smother and swallow us.

Set in the 80s and 90s, it stars Saura Lightfoot Leon as the directionless, recent school-leaver Maria, with Lily-Beau Leach playing the protagonist as a young child. Hayley Squires features as Maria’s ill-fated, all-consuming mother Cynthia, a hoarder who leaves an indelible impression on her offspring. Samantha Spiro is Michelle, Maria’s more conventional foster mother, with Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn appearing as one of Michelle’s former foster kids, Michael. Now well into his twenties with a fiancée and a child on the way, Michael finds himself drawn to the increasingly disturbed Maria.

Written by Carmoon during lockdown, Hoard is a film which heavily reflects that time in its depiction of an inescapable and unhealthy, yet undeniably loving mother-daughter bond. At the height of this formative madness, the pair’s surroundings are quite literally closing in on them, as the junk piles up and the world is shut out.

Inspired by the films of Ken Russell and Nicolas Roeg, yet told from a distinctly female perspective, Hoard digs deep into its heroine’s disturbed psyche in a way that’s uncomfortable and gets eye-wateringly twisted, but finds room too for wit, imagination and compassion. This brutally honest exploration of humanity’s darker desires marks Carmoon out as a filmmaker to watch, even if watching Hoard ain’t always easy.

Hoard is in cinemas from Friday 17 May.