2/10
It would be misleading to say expectations were high for Hurry Up Tomorrow. The Weeknd’s new psychological thriller is based on his most recent (and supposedly final) album, but man, this movie still manages to disappoint.
Hurry Up Tomorrow tells the true story of that one time The Weeknd had to cancel a concert after losing his voice midway through it. Yes, The Weeknd decided that losing his voice during a single show was important enough to warrant a 100-minute film with two major Hollywood A-listers. If your first response to hearing that is the actual premise of the movie is “Wait, what? That doesn’t feel like a real story,” you’d be correct. It isn’t. Instead, the entire movie feels like an ego trip from one of the music industry’s most out-of-touch superstars.
Playing himself, Abel Tesfaye (The Weeknd) struggles after losing his voice mid-concert and fights with his demanding manager and seemingly only friend, Lee (Barry Keoghan). When their relationship reaches a breaking point in the form of an unreasonably impassioned argument, Abel ditches Lee for the mysterious Anima (Jenna Ortega), a girl he locks eyes with during his on-stage breakdown. As they spend the night together, Anima attempts to unravel Abel’s psychological blocks, while Abel realizes Anima is not as sane as he thought she was.
It’s surreal, otherworldly, and truly laughable—not in a good way.
First things first, The Weeknd is a horrible actor. I’m convinced the only reason this got greenlit is because nobody knew just how bad of an actor he is, because nobody watched The Idol (The Weeknd’s infamous flop series). He spends the entire movie doing the weird eye-watering thing he really likes to do and making distracting tongue movements, but above all else, he just can’t act. His performance is empty, sulky, and robotic.
It’s the kind of performance you’d expect after coercing a dude you just met off the street to act in your amateur short film for $15. He’ll undoubtedly be haunted by this laughably stupid performance for the rest of his career, one that should cement him as the leading Razzie contender.
One would hope that being surrounded by two critically acclaimed, established actors would elevate The Weeknd’s lackluster acting game, but in reality, it works the other way. He drags both Ortega and Keoghan down to the depths of disaster.
Ortega is by far the better of the two supporting actors, probably because she gets to spend the entire first act away from The Weeknd, leaning into some of her usual strengths. Ortega’s incredible ability to look really scared while remaining composed is on display in her first scene, while she gets to delve into her mysterious and softer sides later in the film. But Ortega’s appearance in this movie warrants one major question: does her agent have it out for her?
Keoghan is surprisingly horrendous. His enunciated delivery and clingy physical choices create an odd and uncomfortable intensity.
It’s hard to blame him, though, as Lee is definitely the flattest of the three major characters. He lacks a real personality and is only really used as a foil or mirror to Abel. When he reappears in the third act after an hour of distance, and no visible character arc, it becomes clear: Keoghan’s Lee is simply another plot device implemented by The Weeknd to stroke his own ego.
The Weeknd’s ego, it seems, is the only reason the film was made in the first place. Throughout the film, he treats his own life with the utmost importance, never empathising or connecting with any other character. Though the audience is probably supposed to find him a tortured genius type, the impression one leaves the film with is probably much closer to a spoiled baby.
The movie attempts to dive into serious ideas about fame and fandom whenAnima holds Abel hostage after he tries to leave her and return to his partying ways. Though this slight twist is one of the only clean choices in the entire film, it still feels like a watered-down version of the way those same themes are explored in other, more complete works—say, Misery or King of Comedy. Instead of coming off as actual criticism of the spiraling chaos of fame, the message becomes “my fans care so much about me, they’d kidnap me to make sure I’m doing okay. Bet you other pop stars can’t say the same thing.”
During the film’s climax, Ortega’s Anima literally points out that The Weeknd’s music is “much deeper than most people realize” and that it “talks about serious psychological issues” before dancing around to “Blinding Lights” and “Gasoline.” This revelation, that he’s been presenting real ‘deep’ themes in his music, magically fixes the mental block that prevented him from singing in the first place.
The Weeknd’s ego is amplified by the film’s pretentious and surrealist aesthetics, which he describes as “Lynchian.” These blatant attempts at references are as obvious as they are insulting. A wandering camera, quick cuts, pulsing music, an unconscious nightmare sequence, a group of circus clowns, and so on. But unlike David Lynch’s classic surrealist masterpieces, in this film, these moments mean absolutely nothing. They don’t propel new themes or give complexity to previously simple situations.
Sure, Hurry Up Tomorrow is visually beautiful with its dark colors, fire motifs, and intense silhouettes. But none of these techniques have any meaning or purpose. They don’t further the story. They don’t craft themes. They’re used because The Weeknd and Shults think they’ll make their film seem cooler, or to mask the script’s complete lack of inspiration.
Hurry Up Tomorrow is the culmination of a dangerous trend the film industry has fallen victim to in the last couple of years: the abandonment of theme, point, and meaning for the pursuit of nothingness and aesthetic value. There’s Christopher Nolan saying that making films about political points of view is pointless and that the responsibility of the creative is purely to “entertain.” Or there’s Saltburn’s dilution of its actual themes in order to create aesthetic moments. Both of the above examples have had huge successes following this model.
Hurry Up Tomorrow is a perfect example of why prioritizing aesthetic value over true meaning doesn’t work. It’s pointless and messy. It’s a lesson to creatives: when something is written without definitive thematic ideas, it is written with a void where a personality should be.
