Hurry Up Tomorrow Review: An Off-Key Nightmare!

In our digital and video age, more musicians are mixing cinematic strategies to sell their music and create film-like stories that connect them with their audience. We’ve seen this in artists creating short films to accompany albums like Ariana Grande and Beyoncé. Abel Tesfaye, also known as The Weeknd, has decided to take this one step further in creating a feature film as a companion piece to his new album Hurry Up Tomorrow.

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Directed by Trey Edward Shults, coming off of a standout feature film from 2019, Waves, and co-starring Jenna Ortega, Hurry Up Tomorrow seemed to have the ground to stand on to elevate Tesfaye’s (The Weeknd) album with an authentic film. Although it possesses potential in Shults directing to intoxicate audiences, Hurry Up Tomorrow struggles to maintain a fluent pace and layered story of depression and regret, lacking a passion behind it that can separate itself from its own vanity project.

Abel, plays a fictionalized version of himself, a famous musician on the cusp of a breakdown after his girlfriend leaves him, using drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism for this and other internal struggles. At one of his concerts he meets Anima (Jenna Ortega) who makes him question his own actions towards himself and others.

Hurry Up Tomorrow’s biggest downfall is that it is not nearly deep or expanded enough to be as profound as it wants to be. It takes a familiar route of a musician dealing with fame and fortune while engaging in problematic behaviors as a result. All of this is directed stylistically by Shults but even his directing of upside down and 360 camera shots get a little tiresome after a while, along with chaotic editing that mirrors Abel’s internal turmoil. It almost feels like the film is banking on the audience already having an idea of Abel as an artist in the real world and as a result seems to falter when it comes to a more in depth look at Abel as a character.

It feels more like a personal diary entry than a film, its personal nature at times hindering its cinematic qualities or potential. Hurry Up Tomorrow lacks the passion of an artist looking to use film as a storytelling medium and instead feels like Abel dipping his feet into the medium to expand the scope of his album rather than to make a tried and true film. There are scenes where his music is dissected to discuss his mistreatment of women and himself as well as his truly depressed state. It is in this where the film seems to expose its true colors of distancing himself from his past persona in pursuit of a new identity. Therefore, this angle feels more of an industry move by Abel and diminishes the illusion that this movie is just the next project by Shults.

There is some comedy in the film through Jenna Ortega’s character in her goal of getting Abel to realize his past mistakes. Here the film touches on our more recent obsession with dissecting artists’ music, thinking we know them without ever meeting them. Although Ortega’s character functions more as a physical manifestation of his conscience and psyche to combat his dangerous past actions, it does turn the camera on those who feel a kinship with their favorite artists and their intense fascination with total strangers. Hurry Up Tomorrow may give fans of The Weeknd a more in depth look at his album but won’t give general audiences enough meat to chew on.

‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’ Rating – 2/5