May 16, 2025
by Carla Hay

Directed by Trey Edward Shults
Culture Representation: Taking place in California and briefly in Montana, the dramatic film “Hurry Up Tomorrow” features a racially diverse cast of characters (black, white and Latin) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A troubled pop star is haunted by personal problems and gets entangled with an obsessive fan while he’s on tour.
Culture Audience: “Hurry Up Tomorrow” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and pretentious “stream of consciousness” movies that don’t have much to say.

“Hurry Up Tomorrow” is supposed to be the companion movie to Canadian pop singer The Weeknd’s 2025 album of the same name. It’s a very misguided and confused film that will have an unintended effect of turning off potential fans of The Weeknd. This incoherent vanity cesspool (about egos, fame and trauma) proves that the movie’s production money would’ve been better spent on more therapy for Abel Tesfaye, also known as The Weeknd. Ripping off ideas from the Oscar-winning “Misery” doesn’t help.
Directed by Trey Edward Shults, “Hurry Up Tomorrow” was written by Shults, Tesfaye and Reza Fahim. Tesfaye and Fahim are two of the producers of the movie. Shults is the movie’s film editor. “Hurry Up Tomorrow” was filmed in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Bozeman, Montana. In “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” Tesfaye plays a version of himself, with the same birth name and same stage name. For the purposes of this review, the real Tesfaye will be referred to by his last name. The Abel character in the movie will be referred to by his first name.
“Hurry Up Tomorrow” wants to be a psychological drama/thriller, with large chunks of horror thrown into this messy cinematic stew. But there are almost no thrills to be had in this disjointed story, and the horror elements fail at being scary. Instead, what’s offered is a rambling narrative of a moody and self-absorbed pop star dealing with a recent breakup from a girlfriend, a temporary loss of his singing voice due to stress, “mother issues,” and an obsessive fan who stalks him and does much worse.
“Hurry Up Tomorrow” begins by playing the ranting voice message from an unnamed woman (voiced by Riley Keough) who has recently broken up with Abel. In the message, she unleashes a torrent of rage and hurt of someone who has broken free from an abusive relationship. Abel plays this message over and over so he can feel like a victim.
This ex-girlfriend says things in the message such as: “I’m leaving you. I used to think you were a good person … You broke me and made me feel so small. Your mom would be so ashamed if she knew how you treated me. You’re pathetic. And that’s why you deserve to end up …”
The message abruptly cuts off. Later, because this message is played multiple times throughout the movie, the last thing she said in the message is revealed: “And that’s why you deserve to end up alone.”
Don’t expect Abel to reflect on how this relationship ended so badly and take any responsibility he had in it. Don’t expect to get any insight on who this woman is, how long she and Abel were a couple, and why she’s been emotionally damaged from being in a relationship with him. That’s because this movie about a narcissistic pop star has the pop star make the breakup all about how it’s hurting him.
Tears flow down his face, and he seems upset by the breakup at various time in the movie, but you get the impression it’s because his ego is bruised that she broke up with him. Based on how emotionally disconnected Abel is from the people who are closest to him, when it comes to relationship breakups, he’s probably the type of person who’s accustomed to do the dumping and discarding of people in his life. Throughout the movie, there’s a tiresome tone of “Poor me, I’m a misunderstood jerk who can’t understand why people won’t let me mistreat them,” which is very off-putting, to say the least.
As Abel is wallowing in self-pity while he’s on tour, a young woman named Anima, also known as Ani (played by Jenna Ortega), is in Montana. She’s in a cluttered house and pours gasoline in every room of the house when no one else is there. And then, she sets the house on fire, gets in a truck, and drives away.
Don’t expect the movie to explain who lives in this house and why Anima committed this arson. The only hint of Anima’s personal life is shown in a later scene when she gets a phone call from her mother (also voiced by Keough), who has to leave a message because Anima won’t take the call. In the message, Anima’s mother is very upset with her over something she did, but the message is too vague to know for sure if it’s about the arson.
“Hurry Up Tomorrow” eventually reveals something that was already shown in the movie’s trailers: Anima is an obsessed fan of Abel. She eventually ends up in the audience at one of his concerts in California, and she meets him after the show. Until this meeting, the scenes featuring Anima are dull vignettes of her going on a road trip to this concert.
Abel has an entourage, but the person he is closest to is his manager, enabler, and drug supplier: an Irishman named Lee (played by Barry Keoghan), who has been Abel’s manager from the beginning of Abel’s music career. Lee gives a monologue at one point in the movie that barely explains the extent of their relationship. Apparently, Lee gave up everything in Ireland to be Abel’s manager when they were both broke and struggling.
How did Abel and Lee meet? Don’t expect answers to that question. What’s clear is that whatever genuine friendship that Lee and Abel might have had is now questionable because Abel is now Lee’s “meal ticket” that Lee doesn’t want to give up, at any cost. Their relationship seems transactional and not based on brotherly love, even though Lee often calls Abel “brother.”
Their hypocrisy is so ingrained in their lifestyles, they seem to have no self-awareness of it. Abel is seen working out with dumbbell weights backstage. Lee escorts him to the stage as if Abel is a champion boxer, with Abel wearing a boxer’s robe as part of his usual backstage clothing. Abel is no athlete who responsibly cares about his health. He’s really a cocaine-snorting, hard-drinking, self-destructive adult brat.
When Abel loses his singing voice during a concert and finds out from a doctor (played by Ash T) that the voice loss is mostly from psychological stress, Lee lectures Abel about taking some healing syrup. And yet, Lee (who has an obvious cocaine addiction) is the one who also urges Abel to do cocaine, which is one of the worst drugs a singer can consume because cocaine does damage to nasal passages and the throat, which are vital body parts for singing. The loss of a singing voice happened to Tesfaye in real life at a Los Angeles concert in 2022. In real life, he abruptly ended the concert when he lost his voice. This type of concert cancellation is depicted in the movie.
There’s an underlying tone of misogyny throughout “Hurry Up Tomorrow” because the only women heard speaking at length in this pile-on of annoying self-adulation are women who are portrayed as toxic harpies who intentionally hurt Abel. There are hints that Abel’s dysfunction stems from unresolved anger that Abel has against his mother, whom he blames for his horrible childhood. The movie doesn’t show or tell enough about his background to give much meaningful insight.
Ortega makes a good effort to deliver the lines that she’s been given. However, Anima remains a big mystery throughout the movie, which doesn’t care to explain who she is and is more concerned about showing what she does to make Abel uncomfortable. Keoghan gives a believable performance as an enabling manager, but the Lee character is ultimately hollow and vague too.
Tesfaye is the least talented actor of these three principal cast members because sometimes he over-acts, while other times he’s too stiff. And it’s truly ironic that he gives the movie’s worst performance because he’s the only cast member who’s portraying himself in the movie. Ostensibly, Tesfaye should have the easiest acting performance because he’s just depicting a version of himself.
There are lots of whirling camera angles, close-ups of people’s angst-ridden faces, and neon lighting, in attempts to make “Hurry Up Tomorrow” look more artistic than it really is. Tesfaye and Daniel Lopatin co-wrote the movie’s music score, which is one of the few things that this junkpile movie gets right. And the movie has the expected soundtrack of The Weeknd songs, including “Wake Me Up,” “Red Terror,” “Cry for Me,” “São Paulo,” “Timeless,” “Open Hearts,” “Drive,” “Blinding Lights,” “Gasoline,” “Hurry Up Tomorrow” and “Without a Warning.”
Two things that people might expect this movie to be but the movie is not: First, it’s not a concert film. Abel is seen performing in only three separate concert scenes, with one song in each of these scenes. Second, “Hurry Up Tomorrow” is not sexually explicit, like Tesfaye’s critically panned HBO series flop “The Idol,” a drama that was supposed to be erotic but many people thought was very unsexy for how women were degraded in the show. The only sex in “Hurry Up Tomorrow” is hinted at, when Abel spends the night with someone and wakes up the next morning with her in a hotel room.
“Hurry Up Tomorrow” isn’t even that edgy or unique. The movie’s cursing and depictions of drug use are very cliché. And when “Hurry Up Tomorrow” takes a sudden turn into being a horror movie, that’s when things really go off the rails, and there’s no coming back from the wreckage.
Egomania is on full display here. It’s not just with Abel but it’s also with Anima, who goes from being an arsonist to being much worse when she experiences rejection. There’s plenty to show that these self-centered characters desperately want people to admire them, but it’s hard to admire anyone who doesn’t give enough reasons for you to care in the first place.
Lionsgate released “Hurry Up Tomorrow” in U.S. cinemas on May 16, 2025.