HURRY UP TOMORROW Review: Sometimes, the Show Must Not Go On

The artist known as The Weeknd is having a rough week—or, more accurately, a rough decade.

While he grapples with the demands of his latest tour and the potential loss of his voice (yes, it’s rather symbolic), his ex-girlfriend (voiced by Riley Keough) leaves him a voicemail, detailing all the ways he’s mistreated her and is generally not a good person. A mysterious young woman (Jenny Ortega), whom we previously saw pouring gasoline over some house and setting it on fire, enters his life after one of his shows.

They spend a magical, albeit chaotic, evening, which looks like something Gaspar Noé could've filmed if he decided to make a rom-com. In the morning, the magic fades, and the situation takes an interesting turn, but the movie is nearly over by this point.

The authors of Hurry Up Tomorrow have always insisted that it is not, in fact, a tie-in film merely designed to accompany The Weeknd's eponymous album, which came out earlier this year, and in a sense, they have been right. While it’s challenging to define how this project is best described, it's not really a movie, at least in the traditional sense.

An obvious passion project co-written by The Weeknd, director Trey Edward Shults (It Comes at Night, Waves), and Reza Fahim, it may prove somewhat satisfactory for the fans as an intimate glimpse into an artist’s chaotic mind. As a film, however, it is, unfortunately, incoherent, self-indulgent, and borderline pretentious.

It's not merely a matter of a perfunctory narrative that keeps circling around the same glimpses of ideas about the nature of art, artists, and fans, somehow managing to remain both vague and overexplained. For instance, Ortega’s character is literally named Anima (which can refer to either the irrational part of a human soul or the female aspect of the male conscience), just in case the symbolic nature of everything and everyone on screen isn’t completely clear to all viewers. The indulgent, slow pacing, which allows the potential audience to count all the puns they can invent concerning the project’s speed and its title, isn’t the primary issue either.

Ironically, the aesthetic pleasantness of Hurry Up Tomorrow also doesn't do the project any favors. The camera work, helmed by Chayse Irvin (God's Creatures, Blonde), showcases numerous impressive tricks with 360-degree shots and shifting aspect ratios. But the more flashy strobing lights and raindrops on the windows pile on top of each other, the more all of this comes off as an incredibly polished, stylized concept of inner turmoil and suffering.

Even though Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan, in a small role as the protagonist’s friend, strive to make this experience feel lived-in, it’s still not enough to generate any semblance of genuine emotion. Like many passion projects, Hurry Up Tomorrow is primarily the author’s conversation with himself. Just as with any other rambling inner monologue, though, just because the authors find the process amusing or insightful does not mean that others should be subjected to it.

The film is now playing, only in movie theaters, via Lionsgate. Visit the official site for locations and showtimes.