In ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’, Abel Tesfaye/The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye) has just had his girlfriend (voiced by Riley Keough) break up with him. After ending things, she leaves him a vicious voicemail that triggers all of his insecurities. He is tormented by the things she says in the message, and begins to experience intense hallucinations. Only exacerbating things is his growing concern for the health of his voice.
Lee (Barry Keoghan), Abel’s selfish, self-serving best friend, convinces him to continue the tour despite his fears. This results in Abel breaking his voice mid-performance in front of thousands of people. Humiliated, Abel flees the stadium, only to run into a troubled young woman (Jenna Ortega, whose character goes unnamed in the film. She is named in the end credit crawl, but that’s a spoiler for what’s going on here. So, she shall remain unnamed in this review.). Things get intimate between the two too quickly, which only makes his life worse.
‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’ literally opens with Abel blowing raspberries at the camera for close to a minute. That alone should tell you all you need to know about the quality of this flick. The plot for the film appears to have very little in common with the album it’s named after ( which was released months prior to the movie). You would think that this film should act as a kind of visual companion piece to the album, but it doesn’t really. Both album and movie share similar themes, but only seven out of the twenty-two tracks on the album relate to the events of the film in any direct way.
Barry Keoghan isn’t given much to do as Lee. He has very little character or personality. Keoghan is essentially left to hump the air, stomp around, posture, and mug for the camera. He’s serviceable, but leaves little impression. It’s always good to see Barry Keoghan on the big screen, but this is far from his best work. At least he fares better than The Weeknd does.
The Weeknd plays himself. His character is literally named Abel Tesfaye and he makes songs under the name of The Weeknd. His role appears to be who The Weeknd wants audiences to believe is the real him, what he’s actually like off-stage. This leads to an issue: Abel is not painted in a sympathetic light. He does not make for a lead you want to root for.
In ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’, Abel comes across as a whiny, temperamental a-hole who mostly throws tantrums and cries. It’s embarrassing, and is not a good look for the pop superstar. What’s worse? He fails to sell every single second of screen time he’s got. This is easily one of the all-time worst performances in film. The Weeknd tries hard, but fails.
The Weeknd has always come across as someone who has a big ego in real life. ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’ doesn’t help matters. It takes every chance it gets to glaze him up. There is much talk about how talented or gifted he is as an artist and how his music is the greatest of all time. As Lee tells him at one point: “I’m not asking a normal person to go out there and perform, I’m asking a supernatural fucking being, a superhuman, to them. They need you. You give them so much, they need you… You’re not human… You’re fucking invincible, you make them FEEL, on a different level.”
A total of seven of The Weeknd’s songs play during the course of the runtime (and no, not all seven are from the album). At least four of the songs are played in full, and The Weeknd himself even gets to sing two of them in the film. It’s enough to make even the most rabid fan scream: “Enough already”! ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’ also continues the disturbing trend of women not being portrayed well in The Weeknd’s projects. Many of his songs harbor negative emotions towards women, the lead female character in The Idol was problematic (to say the least), and now we have Jenna Ortega as the one-night stand from Hell.
‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’ does Jenna Ortega no favors, revealing her character to be a mentally unwell and obsessed hyper-fan. Somehow though, she is undoubtedly the best part of this film. Ortega has plenty of moments where she gets to show off her acting abilities, but she also isn’t afraid to ham it up on occasion. She is certainly more watchable and believable than our other two leads. You can tell she is putting in the work. This is easily Jenna Ortega’s best performance this year (so far).
Trey Edward Schulz directs ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’ and previously directed and wrote ‘Krista’, ‘It Comes at Night’, and ‘Waves’. He does a poor job. His work here feels directionless, aimless, and even confused. Schultz also co-pens the screenplay with The Weeknd and Reza Fahim. This is The Weeknd’s and Reza Fahim’s first screenplay. They previously co-created ‘The Idol’ with others.
The quality of The Weeknd’s, Shults’, and Reza Fahim’s writing is abysmally bad. The screenplay for ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’ feels absent or not there most of the time, and the film itself often seems unsure of where it wants to go. While the last 26 minutes are the “best” part of the movie, it’s not enough to redeem ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’ as a whole.
This movie has no business being as long as it is. The proceedings run at one hundred minutes (excluding the end credits crawl), but easily could have been cut down to forty minutes tops with nothing being lost.‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’ is filled with dead air, to the point where the end product feels completely empty. Examples of dead air include: It takes a full forty minutes for the plot to start rolling. The opening credits run throughout the first fifteen and a half minutes of the movie. There are multiple scenes where characters look/stare at each other or at the camera, where the camera spins endlessly around characters or rooms, and where characters walk around a room (The Weeknd even does so in total silence once).
Chayse Irvin is in charge of Cinematography. He previously shot ‘Black KkKlansman’, ‘God’s Creatures’, and ‘Blonde’. The Cinematography is one of the stronger aspects of ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’. It’s of a high-quality, but tends to opt for the trippy or dizzying most of the time. It often feels like the film is throwing trippy visuals at you in a desperate attempt to keep your attention, like a parent dangling car keys in front of their child.
The Weeknd and Daniel Lopatin (aka Ohneotrix Point Never) are responsible for the score. Daniel Lopatin previously worked on ‘The Bling Ring’, ‘Good Time’, and ‘Uncut Gems’. While there are some moments where the score borders on being unlistenable, overall it’s another one of the stronger aspects of the movie. It’s very synthy and electronic, and fits the overall vibe this flick is trying (and failing) to create.
‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’ is going for A24 vibes, but it feels more akin to an ambitious, pretentious, ego-driven student film. It wears its influences on its sleeve including ‘Vanilla Sky’, ‘American Psycho’, ‘Misery’, and ‘Purple Rain’. There is an attempt at some deeper meanings, but it’s done in a very amateurish way and is poorly thought-out. This flick is nowhere near as clever or cool as it thinks it is. ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’ is the worst movie of 2025 thus far. Pray it doesn’t get worse than this.
1 STAR
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