'Hurry Up Tomorrow' Review: Not Even The Weeknd's Loyal Fanbase Can Defend this Painful, Egocentric Cinematic Ad
Abel Tesfaye (aka The Weeknd) is a visionary in the musical realm. Whenever he spotlights himself and is required to "act," though, it's like being hit with bug repellent to the face. Lest we forget the horrendous HBO series, The Idol — I couldn't make it past three episodes — but that disaster pales in comparison to his most recent vanity project, Hurry Up Tomorrow, based and inspired by his most recent album of the same name. This time, he upgraded the director by collaborating with Trey Edward Shults (It Comes at Night, Waves) but it’s meaningless, given that what they delivered was a self-indulgent mess of a film — so insufferably arrogant I couldn’t feel my face watching it. I was cringing.
Image copyright (©) Courtesy of Lionsgate
MPA Rating: R (language throughout, drug use, some bloody violence and brief nudity.)
Runtime: 1 Hour and 45 Minutes
Production Companies: Manic Phase, Live Nation Productions
Distributor: Lionsgate
Director: Trey Edward Shults
Writers: Trey Edward Shults, Abel Tesfaye, Reza Fahim
Cast: Abel Tesfaye, Jenna Ortega, Barry Keoghan, Riley Keough
Release Date: May 16, 2025
After splitting up with his nameless ex-girlfriend (Riley Keough), a fictionalized Abel Tesfaye is experiencing severe depression. He is haunted by her voicemail, which blasts him for being a neglectful partner. Still totally hung up, he's bombarding her voice mail, sulking in the tub fully clothed, and looking forlorn. When not performing, Tesfaye spends his evenings partying, having sex with groupies, and doing drugs with his manager and best friend Lee (Barry Keohgan), only ever alone to make new music, Tortured Artist Style™. But Abel is more isolated than ever. His depression worsens when a doctor tells him his vocal cords are damaged. Yet Lee persuades him to keep touring.
Concurrently, Anima (Jenna Ortega), a young woman who just lit her house on fire and ran away, drives all the way to one of his concerts.
During his concert, Abel's voice fails. Right before leaving the stage, he exchanges glances with Anima, and they are entranced by each other. She follows him backstage and the two share a passionate, intimate evening. However, after an altercation with Anima a day after, Abel finds himself in a Misery-esque situation, but with Anima psychoanalyzing his work, determined to help him out of his depressive rut.
Not even fans of The Weeknd will enjoy Hurry Up Tomorrow
Fictionalizing yourself is a daunting task especially when you're at the top of the charts. In art, it is essential to be able to self-deprecate or humanize yourself in some way. It's not a commercial. But in true conceited fashion, Abel sensationalizes himself throughout. From the start, where he blows raspberries at a camera and lifts weights in preparation for a concert, to Lee saying "you're not an ordinary human", to when the movie inexplicably turning into Misery as he watches Ortega's Anima dance to Blinding Lights and psychoanalyze it while he's strapped to a bed. It's all self-indulgence to the highest degree.
Tesfaye's fictionalized depiction of himself (penned in collaboration with Shults and Reza Fahim) isn't doing him or his image any favors. He seems like a nightmare to be around, depicted as a despondent, pitiful artist whose lifestyle is never particularly captivating. A true softboi who's glum, self-destructive, and possessive while being treated by royalty wherever he goes. All with little to no development on those unsettling traits.
Any intentions to deconstruct his psyche is surface-level and weighed down by the writers' active disinterest in exploring its other characters, of which there are basically two. Ortega's Anima, with her increasingly psychotic behavior and arson enthusiasm, is more a vessel of conflict than a character. Keoghan, similarly, was presumably directed simply to act unhinged, charismatic, and Irish.
Rather than develop its characters, Hurry Up Tomorrow displays hollow artsy visuals that only its trio of writers will get and appreciate . The fan event screening I attended had tons of people dressed in The Weeknd merch, and even they were silent with dissatisfaction by the end.
Shults Sinks on The S.S. Abel
Did you appreciate Shult's dreamlike direction in Waves? Were you in your early 20s when you first saw it and did you eventually outgrow the style as you learned to discern when a film is solely artsy for the sake of it? Well, tough shit, because Shults is playing his greatest hits from Waves in Hurry Up Tomorrow's but ad nauseam: never-ending aspect ratio changes, about three instances of the 360 interior car shot within the first twenty minutes alone, long shots of characters frolicking. Shults even gives himself a cameo. I will give some credit to DP Chayse Irvin, who shot this on 35mm; his camera work is striking and aesthetically pleasing. But Shults is on autopilot, and his repetitious directing makes it all come across like keys jingling in a teenage cinephile's face. It feels like a parody of an A24 film straight from The Studio, which is crazy because Waves is A24. I’m sorry I’m not 21 anymore; the slickness and eroticism don't fool me.
Barry and Jenna Can't Save The Poor... Everything
Making such gifted actors as Jenna Ortega and Oscar-nominee Barry Keoghan play against Abel Tesfaye, who truly has no acting skill in his musical bones, has to be some kind of cruel joke. There must be some self-awareness at play, too, as he is non-verbal in most of the scenes he shares with them, letting them do the heavy lifting.
There's shade to The Idol early on, with Lee telling a mopey Tesfaye on their ✨private jet✨ “Well, the acting thing didn’t work out.”... only for Tesfaye to give an even worse performance. Whenever it is up for Tesfaye to deliver a line, you're left cringing, if not unintentionally laughing at his flatness. It's so bad, it's enough to compel you to take a time machine and prevent him from being in Uncut Gems.
Ortega consistently runs laps around Tesfaye, pouring warmth then weaponizing it in an unsettling turn. However, a scene where she's dancing interpretively to Blinding Lights — you know, something Abel and Co. wrote — was a breaking point that made me put on my jacket in preparation to walk out.
Final Statement
Despite the efforts of his talented co-stars, Hurry Up Tomorrow is an agonizingly self-absorbed commercial for Abel Tesfaye's rather good album. Designed to raise his profile, it instead persuaded me to remove him from my Spotify library (for a few days or a week). It's a slog, an endurance test, and an experiment that doesn't translate to film that will make everyone, including his strongest of warriors, hope he never steps foot in front of a camera ever again.
