Hurry Up Tomorrow
Stylised to within an inch of its life, this misery memoir-cum-vanity project from the singer The Weeknd is in need of a decent storyline.
Self-flagellation: Jenna Ortega and Abel Tesfaye
Photo by Andrew Cooper, courtesy of Lionsgate.
It’s perhaps important to know what you’re getting into before seeing Hurry Up Tomorrow. From the start there’s little evidence of where we are, or who anybody is. The film opens with a series of abstract images along with a female voice saying, “I used to think you were a good person – now I know that isn’t true.” A deeply personal, existential rumination of a fictionalised version of the R&B performer The Weeknd (real name: Abel Tesfaye), the film is a reflection of the singer-songwriter’s own mindscape. The Weeknd, who co-wrote the script with Reza Fahim and director Trey Edward Shults, also takes the central role, as an idolised rock star called Abel Tesfaye, who is on a world tour and probably doesn’t know one day from the next – or what city he’s in. He calls himself “a fucking legend,” while his obsequious manager Lee (Barry Keoghan) reinforces the man’s inflated ego by telling him, “you’re a supernatural being, a superhero. Get that into your head – you’re not human!”
As the prologue rumbles on, long before the opening title, we see a young woman in tears, gravely splashing gasoline around the interior of a house. She is seriously upset. And this depiction of Abel Tesfaye is of a seriously unhinged man, too, who slugs back hard liquor for breakfast, sniffs cocaine and stubs out a cigarette in a plate of unfinished food.
The synth-pop soundtrack throbbing throughout these episodes suggests that this could be a visualised translation of The Weeknd’s 2025 album of the same name (it’s actually called a ‘companion piece’), which doesn’t bode well. It’s certainly not Mamma Mia! Sometimes the line between creative inspiration and self-indulgence can be perilously thin. As the film shifts from one mood to the next, switching aspect ratios as it goes (for some reason), it resembles a feverish homage to Bergman, Kubrick and David Lynch. The Weeknd himself (or Abel Tesfaye), following in the footsteps of Mick Jagger, Sting and Cher, is given little opportunity (or dialogue) to prove his thespian chops, leaving the acting to Ortega and Keoghan, neither of whom should be ashamed.
Some of the visuals are very impressive (Shults previously directed It Comes at Night and Waves), but that is really not enough. In fact, it’s hard to know who Hurry Up Tomorrow is aimed at, besides diehard Weeknd fans and Jenna Ortega completists. There have been many films about self-obsessed rock stars on the slippery slope of drugs and alcohol and one wonders if we really need another, especially one as narcissistic and abstruse as this. Seldom has cinema felt so abused as a notebook of feelings and memories, serving as a navel-gazing therapy session. Advice to protagonist: give up the private jet.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Abel Tesfaye, Jenna Ortega, Barry Keoghan, and the voice of Riley Keough.
Dir Trey Edward Shults, Pro Abel Tesfaye, Reza Fahim, Kevin Turen and Harrison Kreiss, Screenplay Trey Edward Shults, Abel Tesfaye and Reza Fahim, Ph Chayse Irvin, Pro Des Elliott Hostetter, Ed Trey Edward Shults, Music Abel Tesfaye and Daniel Lopatin, Costumes Erin Benach and Hannah Jacobs, Sound Johnnie Burn.
Manic Phase/Live Nation Productions-Lionsgate UK.
105 mins. USA. 2025. UK and US Rel: 16 May 2025. Cert. 15.
