Endure the insufferable sounds of crunchy snacks in Holly Hunter’s new comedy short

Although Holly Hunter’s recent short film Crunch is quite absurd and quite surreal, it is in fact semi-autobiographical. Built upon the award winning director’s personal encounter of being trapped next to a loud crisp eater on the train, the three minute whirlwind of a film —shot live on a packed moving train from Bristol to Plymouth — quickly descends into something that might actually sit more the genre of horror for some of us. It’s an immersion into sensory overload – at its most intense.

The film’s strategic assault on the senses – from close ups of crumb covered mouths and in-ear level crunch sounds – was a key for Holly to translate, as the short tackles the topic of misophonia: a condition where people suffer extreme physical and emotional reactions to sound, something that is particularly prominent in the neurodiverse community. Taking the common experience of being “crammed like a sardine on a busy train where it’s hot and everyone seemed to have incredibly noisy snacks”, Holly wanted to depict the “overpowering effects” that sound has on her, as someone that suffers with misophonia.

“I’ve always experienced extreme reactions to sound. For example, I couldn’t be in the same room as my mum eating (love you mum) and a few of my mates really related to this and I discovered the condition was called misophonia [...] It can be hard to express how intense the impact of misophonia can be, so Crunch aims to bring it to life in a playful, light hearted and engaging way”, she says.

And so after her noisy train ride from hell, Holly rushed home to sketch out an idea for the film’s visuals — her points of inspiration being “the shrimp biting scene in the film The Substance”, as well as the romantic comedy Everybody Loves Jeanne, in which the protagonist’s reactions are processed by an internal 2D sketched animated character, “which I thought was really cool!”, Holly says.

An important aspect to the project for Holly was that her protagonist’s internal world felt intense, visceral and quite surreal, all the while grounded (of course) in the continuously crunchy trajectory of her antagonist’s crips eating journey. So, after sitting down with her trusted DOP Charlotte Nind, pulling together her comedy script, making many handmade props and crafting a self-made soundtrack with sound designer Cam Griffiths, the director took her love for displaying a characters’ inner world to the screen.

The results? A comedic cinematic experience with a cartoon feel that inventively portrays the intense realities of sensory struggles. As we watch the lead bear the sounds of crunchy crisps with increasing discomfort “her internal world and external reality eventually really start to blur”, demonstrating the ability of some sounds to “take over every cell of your body”, says Holly. When entering the surreal inner world of her character, the experience is so intense that it feels as though you’re inside the person’s mouth.

“So far, the top reactions to the film have been from misophonia sufferers’, and especially fellow neurodiverse communities,” Holly tells us. “People have said things like ‘you get me!’ and ‘I can so relate’, with a few confessing to covering their ears at points.” Thankful that she could shed some light on the realities of sensory struggles with the film, the director concludes: “There’s a lot of heavy stuff out there at the mo, and I wanted to bring some light heartedness to an intense condition and provide a voice for the many who find this experience so difficult to express in words and to encourage us all to munch more carefully!”