To All the Girls I Never Banged: I'm Sorry (2026)

-Written by Edmund Robertson. 

Both the visual presentation and premise of writer-director Harry Plowden’s experimental short film To All the Girls I Never Banged: I’m Sorry make for a very uniquely thrilling idea. A British man named Ed (Joe Pass) reflects on a past traumatic experience involving getting drugged while running a hostel bar crawl with his friend Nath (Billy Hinchliff). As Ed and Nath are caught in a love triangle to compete for the affection of a woman named Poppy (Thomaslin Lawson), we zoom through Ed’s hazy memories and debilitated psyche as he tries to make sense of what occurred on that night.

Right off the bat, I was gripped into the short for how its experimental visual style expertly depicts how time and intense inebriation distort one’s perception of memory. This distinct style is defined by a harshly saturated yellow and orange color palette with constant film grain suggesting a photographic depiction of memory that has only faded with time. In fact, the whole aesthetic of the short tends to be quite disorienting at times with characters uncannily appearing as magazine cutouts in between shots and To All the Girls I Never Banged: I’m Sorry itself nearly breaking when Ed is at the peak of his unexpected drug trip. Towards the end, Ed’s imagination is depicted with stop-motion cutout animation where people have unusually large facial features, bringing to mind how this bad night at the club has alienated him from those who he thought he could trust.

While I applaud this commitment to a creative visual style, it disappoints me to say that the style often distracts from the story’s substance. As I have detailed in the previous paragraph, I believe that a narrative’s substance can still be inherent in the presentation of its style. However, there is a certain extent to which narrative substance can be effectively communicated through style, especially one that is as chaotic and intentionally disorienting as the one this film conveys. With so much movement on screen at once, it can be easy to feel a little disconnected from the character drama propelling the story.

Once Ed starts to feel the influence of the drugs that were snuck into his beer, the film seeks to emulate the intense feelings of overstimulation felt during a drug trip, though it does so at the cost of getting the viewer acclimated to the action within the narrative. While it wasn’t too hard to parse out what was going on underneath all of the visual flair, I feel like the drama of the love triangle at the center of the story gets lost in the extreme translation of a delirious state of mind to the screen. During the latter half of the short, I even had trouble distinguishing characters since it was all very visually busy the whole way through.

While I love championing films that have a bold visual direction, To All the Girls I Never Banged: I’m Sorry struggles under the weight of having to balance a coherent character-driven narrative with its inventive yet intense tone and aesthetic. Despite my lukewarm feelings on this short film, I remain open to checking out more of Plowden’s work in the future due to the ambitious nature of his directorial style.

Written and Directed by Harry Plowden.

Starring Joe Pass, Billy Hinchliff, Thomasin Lawson.

5.5/10 = WORTH THE RISK (YOU’VE BEEN WARNED)