Hurry Up Tomorrow (2025)
Directed by: Trey Edward Shults
Premise: A troubled pop star (Abel Tesfaye) suffering a nervous breakdown meets a young woman (Jenna Ortega) with a mysterious past.
What Works: Hurry Up Tomorrow was directed by filmmaker Trey Edward Shults who previously helmed Krisha, It Comes at Night, and Waves. Shults is a technically adept filmmaker with a distinct style and that is the best element of Hurry Up Tomorrow. The cinematography is striking with high contrast images, vibrant colors, and elaborate camera movement. Hurry Up Tomorrow is skillfully edited especially early on as it interweaves the stories of its two characters. The sound is also quite effective especially in the way it is mixed. Hurry Up Tomorrow features musician The Weeknd (credited here as Abel Tesfaye) playing a fictionalized version of himself. When popular musicians are cast in movies, especially in roles playing on their public persona, these films are usually vanity projects and part of a larger marketing plan. As such they tend of flatter the musician. To his credit, Tesfaye does not portray himself in a heroic or flattering way. He’s a flawed and difficult character. The first half of Hurry Up Tomorrow generally works. Tesfaye’s character suffers a nervous breakdown that’s causing his voice to fail. He meets a woman who is an obsessive fan and the two of them spend an evening together. The first part of the film is about each of the principal characters running away from their problems and taking solace in each other’s company. It plays well and there is a sweetness to the film when they first get together.
What Doesn’t: The first half of Hurry Up Tomorrow is promising but that’s all it is. The film is slow moving. Tesfaye and Ortega’s characters don’t meet until the halfway point. The story falls apart in its second half. It becomes a Misery-like story with Jenna Ortega’s character revealed to be deranged. It’s a pedestrian idea that doesn’t pay off the first half. The film begins with Ortega’s character setting a rural house on fire and then fleeing to the city. None of that background ever gets any meaningful context and Ortega’s character is nothing more than an obsessed fan. Ortega is doing what the script requires of her but the hostage portion of the film feels like it’s flailing. There’s nothing to it. No real character issues are explored or resolved nor is the film saying anything about being an artist, musician, or a fan. It’s a hollow resolution that undermines the promise of the first half.
Bottom Line: Hurry Up Tomorrow carries on as though it has something profound to say but it’s facile and trite. The film is handsomely produced but none of its technical flourishes are in service of anything.
Episode: #1050 (June 1, 2025)