Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye has yet again been busy. As the singer prepares to leave his stage name behind, he’s dropping a mind-bending new thriller, Hurry Up Tomorrow, timed to the release of his sixth album of the same name. The film, directed by Waves and It Comes at Night filmmaker, Trey Edward Shults, from a script by Shults, Tesfaye, and The Idol co-writer Reza Fahim, is the latest multimedia tie-in to his musical career following projects like the aforementioned The Idol series and his Halloween Horror Nights tie-in After Hours Nightmare. It boasts a strong performance from Tesfaye alongside an excellent one from co-star Jenna Ortega. At the same time, the underwritten script takes too long to get anywhere exciting, and it never stops feeling like a sidecar to the album instead of a standalone feature film.
What Is ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’ About?

In Hurry Up Tomorrow, Tesfaye plays Abel, a version of himself, a world-class musician plagued by insomnia and regret. Abel suffers from exhaustion, high stress, and a vocal condition brought on by said stress after a painful separation from a woman he cared about (played over voicemail by Riley Keough). At his wits’ end, he sees charismatic pyromaniac Anima (Ortega) in the front row of his concert. She sneaks backstage as he’s sneaking out, and the pair run off and have an intimate adventure together. As he prepares to discard her the next morning, she holds Abel hostage to make him confront uncomfortable truths. Things escalate quickly in dangerous directions, while his manager (Barry Keoghan) attempts to find Abel and get his career back on track.
‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’ Boasts Strong Performances Despite Underwritten Characters in a Threadbare Story

Image via Lionsgate

Tesfaye has risen to musical superstardom on tracks like “Blinding Lights” and “Can’t Feel My Face,” but his best and most inspired work has chronicled spirals of hedonism and regret. In tracks like “Wicked Games” or “Twenty Eight,” Tesfaye mastered the persona of a spiraling pleasure addict burning his own life down. He draws from that terrain again in Hurry Up Tomorrow, which is so intimately connected to his new album that it’s essentially a long music video. Tesfaye loosely mined his musical career for drama as cult leader Tedros in The Idol, but his performance there didn’t always hit the mark. Hurry Up Tomorrow is a much better showcase of his acting chops, and he delivers a solid performance where the material allows it as a musician bathed in regret. For his role, Keoghan delivers what the performance requires in a character with little range as written.

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Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan also star in the secretive project.

Jenna Ortega is positively electric as a good-natured but clearly distressed woman obsessed with Abel and securing his musical legacy by any means necessary (think a youthful Kathy Bates in Misery). She delivers exceptional emotion and passion, even when dancing around and delivering on-the-nose exposition about The Weeknd’s musical oeuvre. Where Hurry Up Tomorrow falters most is at the script level. The first half is a slog, as Abel struggles with performance issues and emotions over his ex, while elsewhere, Anima burns a house down before driving cross-country to his show. Hurry doesn’t start to cohere until they come together. The first hour is correspondingly slow and forgettable beyond curiosity over what Anima is doing and why, and she’s the main character, written with any relevant depth.
Hurry Up Tomorrow locks in most in the final act, largely thanks to Ortega’s committed performance. Still, all characters could be written with greater depth and layers, and the narrative itself is threadbare, particularly in the first half. Hurry Up Tomorrow is an admirable experiment, given that tying a theatrically released film to an album is a fine multimedia creative endeavor. That said, more care could be taken to make the movie feel less like a long music video and more like a fleshed-out story. By the time interesting things start happening, it’s too late to save the story. Even when interesting things are happening, especially with Ortega’s Anima in obsessive fan mode, it’s overlaid with on-the-nose dialogue explaining why The Weeknd’s songs are great in unrealistic amounts of detail. As a result, even a committed and solid performance isn’t enough to save the sequence, which painfully reminds the audience it’s an advertisement for the album.
An Exceptional Jenna Ortega Can’t Save ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’

Image via Lionsgate

Hurry Up Tomorrow has a lot going for it. As masterfully showcased in films like It Comes At Night, Shults exhibits a keen sense of vivid, memorable visuals in the film, and there’s clear technical prowess in its construction and design. Jenna Ortega gives a passionate, singular performance, and Tesfaye delivers some excellent and emotive moments despite shallow writing for his fictional on-screen persona. These factors aren’t nearly enough to save a movie in need of a far better script. Characters aren’t given sufficient depth, story beats are repetitive (we get it, you’re stressed walking out to perform), and it’s too late by the time it gets going in the final act. It’s clearly intended to be a companion to and showcase of the simultaneously released album instead of a fleshed-out, standalone film. Regrettably, it never lets the audience forget that fact, feeling far more like a long music video than a feature film.
Hurry Up Tomorrow comes to theaters on May 16.

Hurry Up Tomorrow

‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’ boasts strong performances despite a threadbare script, but it never stops feeling like an appendage to an album instead of a fleshed-out feature.

Release Date

May 16, 2025

Runtime

106 minutes

Director

Trey Edward Shults

Writers

Reza Fahim, Trey Edward Shults, The Weeknd

Pros & Cons

Jenna Ortega is excellent, and the film is a strong showcase of her acting prowess and screen presence, while Tesfaye delivers a strong performance overall.
It’s a well shot film, and Shults’ command of strong visuals is on full display here.

The script suffers from underwritten characters and slow, uneven pacing, particularly in the first half.
‘Hurry’ constantly remind us that The Weeknd’s music is good and popular, and it never stops feeling like an appendage to the album it’s connected to.
Keoghan and Keough are wildly underutilized in moments where the film could benefit from their dramatic talents.