Hurry Up Tomorrow – Film Review

As someone who has been a devoted fan of The Weeknd since Starboy, it pains me to say that Hurry Up Tomorrow is not only a failure—it’s a deeply frustrating, self-indulgent misfire that tests your patience and insults your intelligence. Billed as a psychological thriller and artistic companion to Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye’s 2025 album of the same name, the film is directed by Trey Edward Shults (known for Waves and It Comes at Night) and co-written by Tesfaye himself, along with Shults and Reza Fahim. What should have been a raw, introspective journey into the psyche of an unraveling artist instead devolves into a bloated, incoherent mess wrapped in pseudo-intellectual posturing.

Despite its promise on paper—a surreal odyssey starring Tesfaye as a fictionalized version of himself, spiraling through grief, addiction, and existential dread—the film collapses under the weight of its own pretensions. It wants to be provocative, poetic, and emotionally honest, but delivers only aimless indulgence, inconsistent tone, and half-baked commentary on fame and trauma. Hurry Up Tomorrow doesn’t just stumble; it gets lost in its own hall of mirrors.

Let’s start with the basics: the plot is paper-thin and almost aggressively uninterested in coherence. There is a vague narrative backbone—Tesfaye’s character, abandoned by a girlfriend and emotionally numbed by drugs and celebrity, meets a troubled fan named Anima (played by Jenna Ortega), who draws him into a metaphysical confrontation with his guilt and brokenness. But rather than unfolding organically, the film meanders in a haze of flashy visuals, stilted dialogue, and surreal imagery that substitutes mood for meaning. And not in a David Lynch sort of way—this is far less controlled, far less mysterious, and far more tedious.

What makes the experience worse is how seriously the film takes itself. Every scene seems drenched in melodrama and arthouse affectation. Characters speak in cryptic fragments. The lighting shifts from neon-drenched nightclub blues to washed-out daylight without purpose. Symbolism is crammed into nearly every frame, but none of it lands with any resonance. Instead of letting the audience find meaning, the film shouts its themes at you—fame is hell, guilt eats you alive, trauma loops in your mind—yet fails to explore any of these ideas with clarity or depth. It’s as if the filmmakers mistook murkiness for profundity.

Abel Tesfaye, unfortunately, is simply not a strong enough actor to carry this material. While his music often captures a haunting emotional nuance, his performance here is wooden and flat. Playing a fictionalized version of oneself should lend naturalism, but instead it exposes his limitations. There’s a performative emptiness to his portrayal that robs the film of emotional weight—his pain never feels lived-in, and his transformation never feels earned.

The film tries to balance on the line between art film and music video, and it leans far too heavily into the latter. Extended scenes play out like bloated, abstract promos for Tesfaye’s new album, featuring interludes of him singing or watching others dance to his tracks—particularly a cringeworthy sequence involving Ortega’s Anima dancing to “Blinding Lights” and “Gasoline” while psychoanalyzing his lyrics. These moments aren’t just narcissistic; they’re narratively inert, halting any momentum the story builds.

But even in this mess, there’s one undeniable bright spot: Jenna Ortega. As Anima, she brings a fiery, unpredictable energy that cuts through the fog. She commits fully to the role’s intensity, finding moments of eerie tenderness and explosive volatility. In a better film, this performance could have been a career highlight. Here, it’s the lone heartbeat in a film otherwise on life support. Ortega is magnetic—too good for the material she’s given.

Barry Keoghan, playing Abel’s friend and manager Lee, is entirely wasted in a role that barely registers. Keoghan is saddled with dialogue that borders on parody and is given little to no internal life. He appears only to provide exposition or serve as a symbol of the enabling industry machine—a cliché that’s never developed.

Stylistically, the film is all over the place. Shults, a director known for blending visual flair with emotional storytelling, seems lost here. The cinematography veers wildly between dreamlike slow-motion and handheld chaos, with no thematic justification. The editing is jagged and often jarring, more confusing than kinetic. There’s a dissonance between image and emotion throughout the film, making it hard to feel anything beyond irritation.

Tonally, Hurry Up Tomorrow is confused. It markets itself as a psychological thriller, but it lacks suspense or psychological depth. It occasionally gestures toward horror, then retreats. It toys with romance, then abandons it. It offers metaphysical dialogue about purpose and pain, but without philosophical insight. The film is so absorbed in its aesthetic that it forgets to build character, world, or tension. Even the surreal moments—meant to evoke a descent into the subconscious—feel like undercooked knockoffs of better films like Black Swan, Enter the Void, or The Neon Demon.

Most damning of all is the sheer sense of self-importance that looms over every frame. Hurry Up Tomorrow is not a story told out of necessity; it feels like a vanity project trying to disguise itself as catharsis. Tesfaye’s choice to make himself both the subject and the spiritual savior of the story (literally forced into confession and redemption through the power of his own music) borders on self-parody. It’s not daring—it’s delusional.

And as a fan—someone who has followed The Weeknd’s evolution from the haunting minimalism of Trilogy to the genre-defying pop brilliance of Starboy and beyond—this movie hurts. Tesfaye is an artist capable of genuine vulnerability and vision. But this film feels like he’s trying to say something profound without knowing what that something is. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a concept album where every track bleeds into the next but none of them stand on their own.

In the end, Hurry Up Tomorrow isn’t just a bad movie—it’s a grating, hollow experience that wastes the talents of nearly everyone involved. For fans of The Weeknd, it’s a bitter disappointment. For anyone else, it’s a pretentious slog through faux-profundity and artistic hubris.

Jenna Ortega deserves better, and so do we.