Filmmaker Spotlight
Cooper Hardin
Crickets
Director: Cooper Hardin
Country : USA
Runtime: 9:38
Genre: Narrative
Language: English
Completion Year: 2025
Links: Instagram
Synopsis
It's the holidays... Things get nutty. Fragile egos crack. And a harmless prank somehow ignites a full-blown mockumentary-style witch hunt.
About the Director.
Cooper Hardin is a screenwriter and director with a sharp eye for the wonderfully weird. Known for attracting eccentric personalities in real life, Cooper draws on these encounters to craft satirical, character-driven stories that blend dark comedy with a touch of drama and irony. Her work uses humor as a vehicle to explore deeper truths—because, for her, comedy is the best way to say something that matters.
When she's not making films, she can usually be found dreaming up pun-based business ideas that feature her name. A personal favorite in development (pending the AI apocalypse): "reCOOPerate — The sports drink for people who don’t do sports!"
Director Statement
“Crickets” was born from a very real, very tiny act of chaos: someone actually planted a cricket noise-making device during a holiday party in my building. It was a harmless—and, in my opinion, very funny—prank. Yet it sparked a spiral of outrage through one of the most absurdly dramatic email threads I’ve ever read among the tenants. I took no part in it but happily watched as a bystander.
I poured a glass of wine, curled up in bed, and let the digital drama wash over me like the world’s most ridiculous bedtime story.
Naturally, I had to take it further.
What if this call-out wasn’t just an email chain? What if it turned into a full-blown witch hunt? What if someone hired a mockumentary team to track down the prankster? My brain spiraled into “what ifs,” and the script practically wrote itself.
We live in a time where nuance is a dying art. One misstep, and the mob assembles. We’ve traded conversation for condemnation, humor for outrage, and curiosity for cancellation. Crickets is a satire that pokes fun at the performative outrage cycle—and how, in our rush to be right, to shame, to cancel—we often end up being the punchline ourselves.