Director: Trey Edward Shults
Writer: Reza Fahim, Trey Edward Shults, The Weeknd
Stars: The Weeknd, Jenna Ortega, Barry Keoghan
Synopsis: An insomniac musician encounters a mysterious stranger, leading to a journey that challenges everything he knows about himself.
At some point in every major musician’s career, they tried their hand at acting. From Michael Jackson, Prince and Cher, to Selena Gomez, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift, the list goes on and on of singers who have appeared on screen to expand their reach as artists. It only makes sense then that Abel Tesfaye, more famously known as The Weeknd, would want to try his hand at the craft as well. After a brief appearance in 2019’s Uncut Gems, Abel went on to be in 2023’s The Idol, an HBO series from Sam Levinson, the creator of Euphoria, and was reportedly set in the same universe as that show. Unfortunately, The Idol was poorly received by both critics and audiences, and is considered by many to be one of the worst HBO shows to be included in the network’s prestigious 9PM Sunday night slot. However, one misstep doesn’t mean the journey is over, and that leads us to 2025’s Hurry Up Tomorrow.
Yes, for those who might be wondering, the movie is in fact named after The Weeknd’s most recent album, and acts as a companion piece to it. Directed by Trey Edward Shults (It Comes at Night, Waves), the movie stars Tesfaye as a fictionalized version of himself, as he is currently on tour and performing songs from the new album to hordes of fans who have gathered to hear his music. Accompanied by his manager, Lee (Barry Keoghan), and the rest of his team, the tour is a great success and selling well. However, Abel feels emotionally distraught, having recently been through a breakup and is now addicted to drugs and alcohol to a potential point of no return. This begins to affect his performances as he loses his voice on stage. It is at this moment that he meets Anima (Jenna Ortega), a young woman who seems to be escaping her own past life, and finds a connection in Abel.
Being a companion piece to the album, Hurry Up Tomorrow may benefit some from a listen to the source material, as some of the lyrics do, in fact, tell a story that mirrors the plot described in the above paragraph, and it makes some of the choices the movie makes have a bit more backing to them. Conceptually, as a result, it wants to be an adaptation of the album, while also acting as a retrospective look at The Weeknd’s career and his shattered inner psyche that forms more cracks as the movie progresses. It’s a dichotomy of an artist that’s definitely interesting to explore, and there are glimmers in Hurry Up Tomorrow where it does exactly that. When Abel meets Anima, the two go out and have fun at an amusement park, leaving the rest of the world behind. It’s a moment that looks at an escape from the misery and addictions that plague Abel.
Unfortunately for Hurry Up Tomorrow, it also does a lot of this in a very maligned manner that is more concerned with how it looks than what it is actually saying, leading to a scatterbrained movie that ends up being a huge mess by the end. While there is undeniably a lot of talent on display, from its actors to Shults’s direction and use of flashy visuals and aspect ratios to differentiate sections–a few visual tricks of his going back to It Comes at Night and Waves–to an often thunderous sound design courtesy of Johnnie Burn (coming off an Oscar win for The Zone of Interest), it squanders much of it on a sense of self-indulgence and unsubtle hammering of its messages, both visually and narratively, that only render much of Abel’s dilemma as hollow and empty, and even, at times, unintentionally funny.
For his part, Tesfaye as a singer is effective enough, similar to the real-life artist; but, as an actor, he often comes up short emotionally, particularly in the movie’s more dramatic moments. This is especially noticeable when he’s alongside Ortega, who practically chomps the scenery in the movie’s latter half and delivers one of her more heightened performances to date, and Keoghan, who isn’t given much to do beyond constantly reminding Abel that he has fans who love him and that he needs to keep going for them no matter what, but still maintains a level of charisma over the proceedings. This is further affected by a thinly written script that doesn’t give their characters much more context beyond just the few moments we get early on. Anima is shown to be someone on the run after burning her house down, avoiding her mother and a superfan of The Weeknd who is about to attend his concert, but the allusions made to who she represents in the movie and what she means to Abel are less effective as they are given little to no backing besides anything you heard in the actual album.
Perhaps there is a possibility that superfans of The Weeknd will appreciate Hurry Up Tomorrow a lot more than others. This reviewer is in fact a fan of a lot of his music as well. However, the potential here does not match the final movie’s execution of said elements, with the third act being a bizarre look into Abel’s career to this point and practically spelling out what it wants to say after two acts of very surface level glimpses into its more poignant themes, and then ending on an extremely abrupt note that leaves more questions than it answers. What could have been a very scathing look into an egotistical lifestyle and its repercussions ends up overall shortchanged and lacking. Will it eventually develop a cult following with The Weeknd’s fanbase and listeners of Hurry Up Tomorrow the album? Time will tell, but as of right now, people will probably want the movie to hurry up and end instead.
