The Weeknd’s latest venture into filmmaking lands with all the subtlety of a rhinestone-studded sledgehammer. “Hurry Up Tomorrow” — possibly the most expensive album promotional campaign since Taylor Swift’s 2025 holographic stadium tour — demonstrates that throwing money and ambition at a project doesn’t guarantee artistic success.
Let’s be real here. This psychological thriller-meets-album companion piece can’t decide what it wants to be. The film bounces between artistic pretension and shameless self-promotion like a caffeinated teenager at their first rave. Sure, visionary director Trey Edward Shults brings his signature flair, but even his considerable talents can’t fully salvage this beautiful mess.
Abel Tesfaye (aka The Weeknd) stars as… well, basically himself. His character — an insomniac superstar grappling with vocal issues and existential dread — feels like a therapy session accidentally projected onto the big screen. While Tesfaye shows marked improvement from his cringe-worthy performance in “The Idol,” that’s rather like saying winter in Toronto feels warm compared to the Arctic Circle.
Thank heaven for Jenna Ortega. Her character Anima crashes into the narrative with the force of a wrecking ball wrapped in dynamite. The scene where she literally torches a house (metaphor much?) sets up her role as both obsessed fan and avenging angel. Ortega transforms what could’ve been a one-note stalker stereotype into something far more nuanced — think “Fatal Attraction” meets “Black Swan,” but with TikTok-era anxiety thrown in for good measure.
The story finally finds its footing after an opening hour that moves slower than LA traffic. Barry Keoghan, criminally underused as Abel’s coked-up manager, spends most of his screen time spouting motivational nonsense that sounds like it was pulled from a celebrity’s Instagram caption. “You’re not human, you’re f—in’ invincible!” Yeah, right.
Shults, at least, knows how to make this fever dream look gorgeous. His signature 360-degree pans capture tour life in all its disorienting glory — private jets and identical hotel rooms bleeding together like watercolors in the rain. There’s a particularly telling breakfast scene at 4 p.m. where Abel casually mentions such hours are “normal,” offering a glimpse into fame’s funhouse mirror existence.
But lord, that script. Co-written by Shults, Tesfaye, and Reza Fahim, it often feels like it was workshopped by a focus group of PR executives who’ve never actually met a human being. Characters don’t so much talk as they deliver mini-TED talks about The Weeknd’s artistic genius. These moments transform potentially interesting character studies into what feels like extended bonus content for the Blu-ray release.
The visual aesthetic somehow works despite itself — imagine if David Lynch directed a Super Bowl halftime show. Yet even the most stunning imagery can’t hide the film’s identity crisis. “Hurry Up Tomorrow” exists in an awkward limbo: too weird for mainstream audiences, too commercial for the arthouse crowd.
Somewhere in this ambitious tangle lies a fascinating exploration of fame, obsession, and artistic identity. Unfortunately, it’s buried under more layers than a Canadian winter wardrobe — lost in its own labyrinth of high concepts and marketing strategies. Perhaps that’s fitting for a film about a star lost in the maze of his own success.
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