Amuse Bouche
2021 · 16m
Directed by Jacob Klemmer
Genres: comedy, drama, experimental
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
A Mukbang YouTuber named Natalie eats food and whispers at a camera while her editor Allison grows increasingly repulsed and fascinated by the work. A slow-burn examination of a strange online genre that reveals something genuinely unsettling about parasocial intimacy.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The Mukbang format makes my skin crawl and this film uses that reaction as its entire dramatic engine. Genuinely weird subject for a genuinely weird short.
Jacob Klemmer's Mukbang-YouTuber-and-her-editor portrait is the right subject for our moment — the parasocial-creator essay film is barely a genre yet, and this premise sits at its edge.
Centers on the Mukbang ASMR-eating genre as both subject and formal inspiration for the film's own texture — that mirroring of reference-format is the actual craft move, and Klemmer's measured approach is the right pace for parasocial-intimacy dread.