Hurry Up Tomorrow Review: The Weeknd & Jenna Ortega’s Fascinating Failure

Jenna Ortega as Anima and Abel "The Weeknd" Tesfaye as Abel in Hurry Up Tomorrow. Photo Credit: Andrew Cooper

Trey Edward Shults is a filmmaker who thrives on emotional intensity and visual experimentation, from his powerful dramatic work in Waves to his unconventional horror in It Comes at Night. In Hurry Up Tomorrow, he certainly doesn’t hold back. With stunning cinematography from Chayse Irvin, the film is a kaleidoscope of shadowy dreamscapes, neon-drenched corridors, and surreal, fever-dream imagery that pulls you into a fractured psyche. It’s often gorgeous to look at, even hypnotic. And yet, for all its visual brilliance and Shults’ often masterful direction, Hurry Up Tomorrow ultimately buckles under the weight of its own self-importance.

Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye stars as a fictionalized version of himself: a sleepless, unraveling musician spiraling into madness while caught in an existential tug-of-war with his friend and manager (Barry Keoghan) and a magnetic young woman (Jenna Ortega). It’s a premise ripe for psychological intrigue, but the execution is too abstract and indulgent to resonate. The film barely follows a conventional narrative, favoring vibes over clarity and mood over meaning. It drifts in and out of coherence, frequently losing itself in elliptical monologues and music video-like interludes. “Style over substance” has never applied more aptly to a film than this.

It’s no secret that The Weeknd is a phenomenal musician. The film opens with The Weeknd sitting at a piano and performing a song. His vocals and the song are phenomenal, as well as the camerawork and lighting, and I wrote a whole page about what a strong opening musical number this was. Imagine my shock when I realized it wasn’t actually the opening scene of the film; it was just a song performance followed by an advertisement to stream his new album. The studio logos rolled shortly after that.

The titular song is genuinely one of The Weeknd’s best, and he uses the emotional power from the lyrics well during a pivotal moment in this film. One of the film’s shining elements is Shults’s direction. He brings everything to life superbly with cinematographer Chayse Irvin. They enhance every scene, and this is the best-looking movie I’ve seen in a long time. It’s the type of movie where nearly every shot is so perfect that they all belong on any director’s mood board when they pitch their films in the future. If most movies looked as good as Hurry Up Tomorrow, society would be a happier place.

With an aesthetic as distinct as this, it’s hard to believe you’re not watching an A24 movie because this style is right up their alley. But instead, Lionsgate gave $15 million to bring this project to life, and it is daring. Surreal and cinematic in all the right ways, this film has a lot going for it visually. But what’s on the page? I can’t really tell you. It’s the type of movie that’s very metaphorical, and you’re going into it with the realization that you’re not really watching people living through stories; you’re watching ideas. And I’ve never been a fan of movies that rely too heavily on abstraction.

The result is a movie where you cannot buy into the events that are happening. You’re never sucked into this world with these characters. You never forget that you’re watching a movie because it constantly reminds you with all these contrived situations and ridiculous ways that characters behave. The whole final act of Hurry Up Tomorrow is a huge swing and a miss. The trailers show a scene where Anima (Ortega) has The Weeknd tied to a bed. The things she does to him while he’s on this bed are kind of hysterical, and it’s not supposed to be. She taunts him by playing his own music, lip-syncing to it, and analyzing it. It’s very self-indulgent.

Is The Weeknd a good actor? The answer is a little tricky. The reason I wasn’t sure if this was a vanity project at first is that this movie isn’t exactly him screaming, “Look how great I am!” As a matter of fact, this film portrays the worst possible version of Abel, a man prone to violence, dismissiveness, and a poor temper. One can only hope he isn’t like this in real life. But it does sometimes feel like The Weeknd making a case for himself as a dramatic actor. He’s fine in some scenes, but during the more intense ones, such as a scene where he’s rudely telling Amina to shut up and brushing her off, my audience was in stitches at how priceless his performance was.

It reminded me of Harry Styles’s performance in Don’t Worry Darling, only slightly worse. Not every talented musician can make an impact as a thespian (I’m not exactly eagerly awaiting Styles’ Marvel return or The Idol season 2). Ortega gives a solid performance here, but I don’t think she’s been in many great movies over her career. She’s a tremendous talent who’s been in many decent projects, but I’m still waiting for something phenomenal.

The film’s ambition is admirable, but its storytelling is so fragmented and opaque that it often feels like watching someone’s diary set to a synth-heavy soundtrack; it’s beautiful, but inaccessible. There’s no denying that Hurry Up Tomorrow is bold. It takes risks. It commits to a unique artistic vision. But those risks don’t pay off in a satisfying or emotionally grounded way. Instead, we’re left with a surreal, slow, often frustrating descent into the mind of an artist who’s clearly working through something, but may have been too close to the material to shape it into a truly effective film.

It’s a fascinating failure. Hurry Up Tomorrow is a sensory experience with flashes of brilliance and some of the most perfectly composed shots of the decade without a single wasted frame, but ultimately too strange and self-absorbed to recommend.

SCORE: 5/10

As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 5 equates to “Mediocre.” The positives and negatives wind up negating each other, making it a wash.

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Disclosure: Critic attended a screening for our Hurry Up Tomorrow review.

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