In 2022, singer-songwriter Abel Tesfaye, known professionally as The Weeknd, made headlines when he lost his voice during a performance in Los Angeles. Doctors could find no root cause, medically, prompting the artist to realize it was all psychological from “self-imposed pressure.” It’s the basis for psychological genre-bender Hurry Up Tomorrow, starring Tesfaye in an […]
Jenna Ortega as Anima in Hurry Up Tomorrow. Photo Credit: Andrew Cooper
Director Trey Edward Shults (It Comes At Night), who co-wrote the feature with Tesfaye and Reza Fahim, performs a Herculean feat of bringing artistry and visual interest to what amounts to little more than a superficial vanity project. Swooping camera work, soft focus photography, dreamy imagery, aspect ratio shifts, and Shults’ trademark ability to capture pitch black darkness on screen lend an arthouse feel that makes Hurry Up Tomorrow look and feel far more sophisticated than it really is.
The core conceit and narrative thrust hinges on The Weeknd’s forced reckoning with his fame, identity, and the long-buried demons wreaking havoc on his present. It’s overwrought with the dramatics of a musician opening his veins and exposing his vulnerability, except Hurry Up Tomorrow frequently lets the performer off the hook. The Weeknd is tormented by a recent breakup, but the details remain as unnamed as the woman who broke his heart. That extends to his Anima, herself dealing with turmoil in a relationship with her mother. If you’re still unsure about the film’s clumsy Psych 101 metaphor, just look to the end credits to see who provides the voices for the ex and the estranged mom.
Jenna Ortega as Anima and Abel Tesfaye as Abel in Hurry Up Tomorrow. Photo Credit: Andrew Cooper
Rendering the pertinent details in such broad and vague fashion becomes a glaring problem in the film’s third act, which sees The Weeknd absolving himself with even vaguer apologies without ever actually confronting the sins the film only reluctantly hints toward. Apologies that read disingenuous when Hurry Up Tomorrow places just as much blame, if not more so, on the relentless manager who refuses to take The Weeknd’s pleas into consideration, even as he plows him with piles of coke for the sake of compliance.
It winds up making the Anima archetype crucial; the film greatly benefits from Jenna Ortega’s ability to remain vulnerable even while embodying some of The Weeknd’s more deranged tendencies and impulses. It’s she we wind up empathizing with, especially as her male counterpart succumbs to self-pity and despair.
What’s meant more as a baptism by fire that could double as a metaphorical rebirth instead rings hollow. That Shults and Tesfaye opt for a more experimental, emotion-driven form of visual storytelling over conventional narrative further alienates. It all makes for an exhausting show of empty vanity.
Hurry Up Tomorrow releases in theaters on May 16, 2025.
