Hurry Up tomorrow

In the pantheon of vain celebrity projects, Hurry Up Tomorrow occupies a very special place: it is neither the triumphant reinvention of a pop icon nor a courageous artistic failure, but rather a deeply misguided dive into cinematic self-flagellation that sets out to settle scores and ends up as nothing more than a plaintive whisper of self-pity. Directed by Trey Edward Shults, co-written by Shults, Abel Tesfaye (The Weeknd), and Reza Fahim, and starring Abel Tesfaye himself in a version of his melancholic persona, the film is a failed and poorly executed attempt to fuse performance art, therapy, and music video into something meaningful. The result is less a film than a long, feverish dream steeped in affectation, aiming for the psychological density of Ingmar Bergman and the stylized surrealism of David Lynch but coming closer to a teenage diary written in eyeliner and lit by strobe lights. Both aggressively serious and embarrassingly superficial, this film desperately wants to be important, but doesn't even know what it's trying to say.

The starting point, if you can call it that, is the dramatization of a real incident: Abel Tesfaye lost his voice on stage during a concert at SoFi Stadium in 2022, interrupting the show and leaving his fans confused. This moment, fraught with professional vulnerability and psychological breakdown, could have offered a fascinating look at the pressures of fame, performance, and masculinity in modern pop culture. Instead, it is mythologized into the story of a wounded artist who loses more than his voice—his identity, his connection to reality, his grip on control—and descends into a whirlwind of lust, pain, obsession, and ambiguity. Abel Tesfaye plays Abel, a sad-eyed superstar in the throes of depression following a breakup, who replays his ex's cruel voicemail message on repeat while stumbling between concert halls, hotel rooms, and neon-lit dreamscapes. He is followed by his manager Lee (a wild Barry Keoghan, who valiantly attempts to inject manic energy into a role that resembles a failed parody of a TikTok manager), and haunted by a mysterious and disturbed fan named Anima (Jenna Ortega), whose entrance—pouring gasoline in her childhood home—sets a tone that the film never manages to justify or effectively intensify.

If Hurry Up Tomorrow fails, it does so in such a flamboyant and stylized way that its collapse becomes hypnotic in its own right. Trey Edward Shults, whose Waves remains a visceral exercise in emotional storytelling, relies here on the visual tricks that made that film so distinctive: spinning cameras, format shifts, grainy textures, and long sequences where characters exist not to do anything, but to pose, cry, or wander through a liminal space. The first hour is a long build-up to a collapse that seems inevitable from the opening scene, where Abel Tesfaye stares at himself in the mirror and makes noises with his mouth like a capricious child trying to provoke a catharsis. The aesthetic is rich—cinematographer Chayse Irvin's work with 35mm film is undeniably beautiful—but it all serves no purpose. These are beautiful images chasing an absent meaning. The music, a patchwork of tracks from Hurry Up Tomorrow and other Weeknd albums, flows through the film like echoes in a cavernous studio, sometimes enhancing a scene but more often reminding us that the music would be better served without this cinematic appendage.

It is in its narrative and psychological ambition that the film fails most spectacularly. Abel Tesfaye clearly wants this to be a self-examination, a dissection of The Weeknd's personality and the emptiness that lies beneath the superstar's veneer. But he confuses complacency with honesty, enigma with depth. His character is a walking cliché: the tortured, misunderstood, isolated genius, loved by millions but invisible to everyone. The film constantly alludes to trauma—an absent father, a toxic relationship, celebrity-induced dissociation—but never explores any of it with a modicum of narrative clarity or emotional nuance. Instead, we are treated to endless scenes of Abel Tesfaye sulking, crying, doing drugs, and eventually being tied to a bed by Anima, who performs a disturbing interpretive dance to Blinding Lights, delivering a monologue about how his music expresses his pain. This moment, meant to be the film's surreal climax, is so bizarre and embarrassing that it almost saves the film as a cult midnight curiosity — but only almost. It's a sequence destined to become a meme, not to be remembered.

Jenna Ortega, for her part, does her best to bring volatility and complexity to Anima, but she is ultimately reduced to a symbol, not a character: a manifestation of Abel's guilt, trauma, or subconscious, or whatever other half-baked Jungian metaphor the script stumbles upon. The fact that her name is Anima is, of course, no coincidence; the film wants you to understand that she is the female mirror of Abel Tesfaye's soul. But it lacks the intellectual rigor or emotional clarity necessary for this idea to resonate. Instead, it feels like an idea straight out of film school and transposed onto a pop star's midlife crisis. Lee's character, played by Barry Keoghan, is just as emblematic: he exists solely to serve Abel Tesfaye's narrative, offering him drugs, bad advice, and motivational speeches late at night that are as incoherent as they are emotionless. One of the film's most unintentionally hilarious moments comes when Lee says sincerely to Abel, “You're not like other people. You're not human.” This line is meant to be an affirmation, but it sounds like a parody — and perhaps unintentionally, it's the most honest line in the film.

There is a deep void at the heart of Hurry Up Tomorrow that neither the visual prowess nor the musical atmosphere can mask. It's not just that the film lacks a story or characters—many great films do—but that it lacks any emotional architecture to justify its indulgence. Abel Tesfaye's portrayal of himself as a man crushed by his own myth could have been convincing if it had shown us who he is, rather than who he thinks we think he is. There's a scene where he and Anima play air hockey in an arcade, a moment of levity that could have grounded the film in something human, real. But even that turns into a stylized vignette of melancholy, another slow-motion montage set to synths and sighs. Nothing stays. Nothing lingers. When the film returns to its starting point, with Abel backstage, silent and broken, the journey feels circular in the worst sense of the word: not cyclical as a narrative device, but repetitive as a symptom of its own creative exhaustion.

Hurry Up Tomorrow is a portrait of artistic narcissism disguised as vulnerability. It's a film that seeks to capture fame, identity, and emotional collapse, but does so with such superficial and theatrical introspection that it becomes impossible to distinguish from self-parody. Die-hard fans of The Weeknd may find a few tidbits to savor—a glimpse of Daniel Lopatin's haunting soundtrack, a fleeting shot that captures the dizzying isolation of the spotlight—but for anyone looking for a film with real substance, it's nothing but an empty echo chamber. The project feels less like a confession than an audition for a deeper soul that Abel Tesfaye has not yet dared to reveal. And as the credits rolled, I couldn't help but think: maybe it's not his voice that's gone, but the courage to truly express himself. This is a film that dares to ask for empathy, but doesn't deserve it. A heartless visual album. A requiem for a character who died long before the first frame was shot. Simply put, a total disappointment.

Hurry Up Tomorrow
Directed by Trey Edward Shults
Written by Trey Edward Shults, Abel Tesfaye, Reza Fahim
Based on Hurry Up Tomorrow by the Weeknd
Produced by Abel Tesfaye, Reza Fahim, Kevin Turen, Harrison Kreiss
Starring Abel Tesfaye, Jenna Ortega, Barry Keoghan
Cinematography: Chayse Irvin
Edited by Trey Edward Shults
Music by Abel Tesfaye, Daniel Lopatin
Production companies: Manic Phase, Live Nation Productions
Distributed by Lionsgate Films
Release date: May 16, 2025 (United States, France)
Running time: 105 minutes

Seen on May 16, 2025 at Gaumont Disney Village, Theater 3, seat A18

Mulder's Mark: