Hurry Up Tomorrow

There is a specific kind of sweat that only comes from 3:00 AM existential dread, the sort where your ceiling fan starts looking like a countdown clock. Trey Edward Shults—the man who basically weaponized cinematic anxiety in Waves (2019) and It Comes at Night (2017)—was the perfect candidate to capture that exact vibration. When it was announced he was teaming up with The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye) for a psychological thriller, the internet expected a feature-length music video. What we actually got in Hurry Up Tomorrow was something much stranger: a claustrophobic, identity-shattering odyssey that felt like it was filmed inside a migraine.

I watched this while sitting on a floor pillow because my couch was being professionally cleaned, and honestly, the lower perspective made the screen feel like it was swallowing me whole. It’s that kind of movie. It doesn’t just ask for your attention; it demands your pulse rate.

The Sound of Losing Your Mind

The plot follows a fictionalized version of The Weeknd, a musician trapped in the amber of his own fame and a crippling case of insomnia. He’s a man who has traded his soul for a setlist, and his reality starts to fracture when he meets a mysterious stranger named Anima, played with a haunting, ethereal stillness by Jenna Ortega. Ortega has become the patron saint of the macabre lately, from Wednesday to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but here she’s less "goth icon" and more "human Rorschach test."

Their chemistry isn’t romantic; it’s chemical. They collide like two subatomic particles in a particle accelerator. As they wander through a distorted Los Angeles that looks like it was lit by a dying glow-stick, you realize this isn't a traditional thriller. It’s a drama about the ego's death-rattle. Abel Tesfaye has more screen presence when he isn’t trying to be a 'star' than when he is, and Shults strips away the pop-star artifice to find a raw, vibrating vulnerability underneath.

A Cast of Beautifully Broken Parts

While the core duo carries the heavy lifting, the supporting cast adds layers of genuine unease. Barry Keoghan shows up as Lee, and because it’s Barry Keoghan (fresh off the polarizing Saltburn), you spend every second he’s on screen waiting for him to do something deeply upsetting. He’s the master of the "polite threat," and his interaction with the protagonist feels like a cat playing with a particularly shiny yarn ball.

Then there’s the voice. Riley Keough, who we last saw rocking out in Daisy Jones & The Six, appears as a "Girl on Voicemail" and eventually the "Mother." Her voice is the tether to a reality that the protagonist is desperately trying to outrun. It’s a clever use of her particular brand of grounded, earthy intensity.

The film's score, composed by The Weeknd himself, is essentially the heart of the movie. It’s not just background noise; it’s a character. It thumps with a low-frequency dread that makes the $15 million budget feel like $100 million. It’s polished, yet jagged—much like the cinematography that shifts and bends as the protagonist's grip on "now" begins to slip.

The Mystery of the Disappearing Act

So, why did a movie starring one of the biggest pop stars on the planet and the internet’s favorite actress only claw back $7.7 million at the box office? It’s a classic case of a "vibe" being marketed as a "movie." Live Nation Studios and Manic Phase seemingly struggled to tell audiences what this was. Was it a concert film? A horror flick? A vanity project?

In reality, it’s a dense, psychological drama that shares more DNA with David Lynch than with A Star is Born. The marketing team tried to sell a neon party, but the film is a brutal hangover. Released in a crowded window where franchise fatigue was being replaced by "prestige fatigue," Hurry Up Tomorrow simply slipped through the cracks. It’s a shame, because in an era of CGI-slop and safe storytelling, this is a film that actually takes a swing. It’s messy, it’s loud, and it’s occasionally self-indulgent, but it feels alive.

The film serves as a fascinating capstone to The Weeknd’s current creative era. It’s the visual manifestation of the themes he’s been poking at in his albums for years—fame as a purgatory, the search for a "pure" self, and the terror of the morning light. It might have failed to set the box office on fire, but for those of us who like our cinema a little bit sweaty and a lot bit weird, it’s a trip worth taking. Just don't expect to sleep well afterward.

Trey Edward Shults proves once again that he is the reigning king of making the viewer feel like they need a long, hot shower. It’s a beautiful, fractured mirror of a movie that reminds us that sometimes, the most terrifying thing you can encounter in the dark is yourself.