‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’ review: Save your tears

Music megastar The Weeknd ropes in Jenna Ortega, Trey Edward Shults, and others for the disappointingly dull Hurry Up Tomorrow.

As a musician, Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye brings a cool, emotional, yearning presence. It’s the sort that shies away from the superficiality of many other modern pop musicians. The Weeknd strives to be true to his warped soul. He wants you to feel what he feels, experience the wealth of pain, searching, and catharsis. So in theory, his desire to expand outside his normal medium and explore these avenues in film seems like a natural, possibly even progressive, leap forward. This is why one could try to have high hopes for his feature-starring debut, Hurry Up Tomorrow.

Yes, the stink of his failed TV effort (HBO’s The Idol) lingers on this new project. But the benefit here is the undeniable talent, in front of and behind the camera. Jenna Ortega! Barry Keoghan! And Riley Keough (in voice only) surround the Grammy-winning star in an album-accompanying bit of cross-promotion. It allows The Weeknd to play a variation of his famous persona, who must come to terms with his romantic, pathological, and psychological failings, all while being stalked by an obsessive fan. It’s co-written, edited, and directed by Trey Edward Shults, an immensely gifted director behind such works as It Comes at Night and Waves. And it’s shot on 35mm to boot. Hurry Up Tomorrow possibly had the makings of an intriguing music star vehicle.

So with all that said…what happened here? The premise is at least intriguing, the cast is quite good, and the director knows how to bring a propulsive, unnerving energy that could match The Weeknd’s aching desire for fraught, unabashed self-expression. If Hurry Up Tomorrow’s end product is a proper indicator, the movie is oddly, frustratingly shallow. There is a clear drive to say something profound, but what comes out is more confounding. Either they never quite figured out what that is, they were hoping to find it in the process and never did, or they simply were coasting the whole time. Shults’ latest film is a disappointingly dull exercise in masochistic malaise. It’s constant, lumpy build-up to a resolution that feels as hollow as it does unearned. “Hurry up” indeed!

A lost voice.

Inspired by a real incident in September 2022 when intense psychological stress caused The Weeknd to lose his voice during a concert, Hurry Up Tomorrow centers around Tesfaye as he plays a debauched version of himself going through the wear-and-tear of a recent break-up. His headspace is all out of whack, and it doesn’t help that a prolonged worldwide tour (along with drug/alcohol abuse) has rendered the musician a mess. (More like The Wreckd.) As Tesfaye is locked in this spiraling turmoil, his manager and lifelong friend Lee (Barry Keoghan) tries to put his client on the level. But little do either know that their lives will only continue to be upended.

In Los Angeles, a troubled young woman named Anima (Jenna Ortega) burns down her house. She’s on a path of destruction, and also a major fan of The Weeknd. Sure enough, when the troubled talent has a disastrous Halloween concert, these two lost souls connect through their shared sense of pain. But when the stressed superstar is ready to say goodbye and set off on the last leg of his tour, Anima isn’t ready to call it quits. And that’s when the pain continues.

Along with leading Hurry Up Tomorrow as his sappier self, Tesfaye is credited as co-writer and co-producer, and his influence is perhaps too heavy for this indulgent movie’s own good. It is a frequently and frustratingly dull affair, one with an overlong first act that weirdly speed runs its way through its final twenty minutes. There’s barely a proper sense of structure. To use a term that gets overused with musician-led features, it plays like one overlong music video. And that would be fine if the movie were to lean into its inherent musicality. But outside of two or three dynamic concert sequences, which benefit the limited Dolby screenings held nationwide, The Weeknd finds himself playing a perpetually mopey, whiny version of himself who is constantly stuck in a depressive inertia state that even fans would have trouble finding interesting or compelling.

Lots of misery.

Having two quality actors like Keoghan and Ortega should help bolster Tesfaye in theory. They should give him the support to carry out his project. But in practice, these two immensely talents only showcase The Weeknd’s acting limitations. The viscerality they bring to their limited roles highlights how one-note and whiny the musician-turned-actor can be, and how often he will rely on the same few modes without providing much nuance. For as much as the wannabe actor gives Hurry Up Tomorrow his all, it can’t help but feel like an extremely performative effort.

Shults is a filmmaker who knows how to translate internalized anguish and emotional distress to effective means, which is probably why the movie’s lightly plotted but visually stunning opening 25 minutes are where the movie is at its best. With his whirling, fast-moving camera, Shults directs and edits Hurry Up Tomorrow with a feverish intensity in the movie’s opening act. It’s a shame, then, that he can’t find that energy for the last remaining 70-something minutes. Perhaps The Weeknd’s draining over-intensity that wears even the director down. But as this overly-serious and overly self-conscious effort plows its way through a listlessly dull series of events, the movie can’t help but lose whatever momentum and intrigue it held in its first stretch.

While Hurry Up Tomorrow looks gorgeous in crisp 16mm and even Super 8 film (along with 35mm), Shults and Tesfaye undermine the cinematic flourishes by ripping off of other, better films and filmmakers. The second half is so indebted to Misery, they might as well write Stephen King a royalty check. There’s an extended homage to American Psycho that is at least entertaining, solely because Ortega brings a cheeky charm that’s otherwise absent in this anguished affair. And all the generally claustrophobic photography, while not out of sync with the Shults’ previous work, is more indebted to the Safdie brothers than anything that is organically creative.

It’s a shame because Ortega (bless her) is going for it. The immensely talented actress is one of our most promising new stars, and commits as if she’s Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence. Rather than make you engaged, it just leaves you feeling depressed on her behalf. Ortega was going to outshine the two-dimensional Tesfaye. That was always a given. But she doesn’t need to go this hard, especially for such a flimsy film. Whenever you see how well her horror-stricken face is complemented by 35mm film, and how much she can tearfully rage, you’re left wishing that she had better material to work with. Ortega brings more liveliness, invigoration, and dedication than this movie has without her — save for the stellar camera work.

The bottom line.

There are other little things to like here — the intimacy brought to certain musical sequences, for instance — but it all feels washed-out by the whole overwroughtness of this failed endeavor. It’s a shame that The Weeknd can’t translate his soulful musical talents elsewhere, despite its very persistent efforts. When it comes to baffling vanity projects like this, I tend to have a strong stomach for the sort of inherent indulgences that come with this territory. Film is frequently an indulgent medium, and I have trouble fully faulting anyone who tries something bold.

But what I can’t ultimately abide is something this flat and sorely false-seeming. Hurry Up Tomorrow is a whole lot of noise, and lots of on-screen fury, but in the service of what? I’m not sure. I hope The Weeknd got what he wanted from this overblown effort. But maybe the guy should stick to the tunes.

Hurry Up Tomorrow is now playing in theaters everywhere. Watch the trailer here.

Images courtesy of Andrew Cooper and Lionsgate. Read more articles by Will Ashton here.