The many haphazard ideas that course through our brains during sunrise are exactly what fascinates filmmaker Zhen Long, whose 2024 short on the matter was selected for the Silicon Beach Film Festival. Call it a continuation of her experimental super short film Hair & I, or a semi-abstract dissection of someone’s inner thoughts to start the day, Bad Morning winds up being an oddity in its own right. And yet, it’s strangely relatable.
Writer/director Long uses a number of simple editing tricks, overlaying clips of herself preparing her beverage of choice with slight delays, to create a ghosting effect. Spliced in between these recordings are animated segments; an old MacBook ad and Adult Swim. The film takes a little getting used to, especially towards the end, where you are hit with a barrage of stock media like cheetahs running, or a drone shot of the Pyramids of Giza. But these serve a purpose, and you’ll actively be questioning just what Long is trying to convey with each creative choice.
There’s no real need to extensively discuss how most people feel in the morning. Being overwhelmed or discouraged are common occurrences, but at some point in time, everyone has dealt with the difficulty of getting their day started, surrounded by a cacophony of audiovisual stimuli. In this particular situation, Long’s pseudo-documentary effectively avoids excessive exposure to external stressors and instead concentrates on the spontaneous, internal mindset of her character. Perhaps a more concrete structure to the editing or a more random assortment of clips could have improved this, but it’s irrelevant in the context of a five-minute short.
Bad Morning is likely to delight fans of Long’s heavily experimentalist style, and while what’s on display isn’t groundbreaking by any means, it’s far more interesting than it has any right to be.
