Review: The Weeknd's Hurry Up Tomorrow (The Movie)

Wait, there's a movie for his new album?

Yes.

And that was my question too, as I burst into laughter seeing the trailer for it while watching another, much better movie, thinking it was an out-of-season April Fools joke. Sadly, it is not. Unphased by the train-wreck that was The Idol, The Artist formerly known as The Weeknd still believes he can make it big as an actor; however, Hurry Up Tomorrow makes Prince's Purple Rain look like The Godfather.

I'm going to spoil the movie, so you don't have to see it, so if you're seriously planning on watching it, stop reading now! But you're not missing out on much, trust me.

The film opens to an answering machine message, a woman's emotional final goodbye to a manipulative ex, before zooming out into Hurry Up Tomorrow's original or standard album cover.

This dramatic pose turns out to be moments before The Weeknd's warm-up vocals, which amounts to blowing raspberries into the camera: a tonal shift that completely destroys any semblance of tension. And yes, he plays himself in the film, like Prince & The Revolution in Purple Rain.

Enter Barry "Bro" Keoghan, playing an uninspired, stereotypical, manipulative manager, who hypes and cokes up Tesfaye as a demi-god among mortals. Despite the party life, women and drugs, the artist cries profusely in nearly every scene; likely from The Weeknd staring at his own reflection for hours on end (or being heartbroken over his ex dumping him, as the scriptwriters spend the first half of the film trying to convince the audience).

We do get a few scenes of The Weeknd performing Wake Me Up (feat. Justice) at a concert. Like, don't get me wrong, it's the best track on the album, but like it's a feature-length album, surely we could have dipped into more of it for this feature-length film? Nah, you forget you're watching this shit.

Although I will say Hurry Up Tomorrow does at least feel like the product of an AI which was was asked to generate a movie based on the lyrics of The Weeknd's songs, such as Gasoline. Debauched, nihilistic and oddly evangelic.

Speaking of gasoline (iykyk), Jenna Ortega absolutely carries the film and prevents it from being utterly banal, despite being typecast as an edgy-psycho-femme-fatal. The Weeknd seemingly hooks up with her, playing one of his fans, after a show, but when he tries to ghost her the next morning, he ends up being tied up and kidnapped. Instant karma, especially considering it looks pretty sus to hook up with Ortega, who is famous for playing a 16-year-old girl. But I guess days of a feather flock together.

What follows is the absolute high point of the film. Oretga first brutally murders Keoghan while failing to rescue The Weeknd, which I'm sure would be a cathartic watch for Sabrina Carpenter's tastes. In the next scene, Oretga tortures The Weeknd by fan-girling and dancing to Blinding Lights and Gasoline, while demanding to know the meaning behind his twisted lyrics. All he can respond with is sobs of despair and screams of pain. If only the rest of the film treated its source material with this level of irreverence. Alas.

And this is why I feel the movie was so terrible. It just couldn't decide what it was supposed to be. Is it a concert film? An extended music video, à la Michael Jackson? A stand-alone feature film, starring the artist who made the soundtrack, like Sakamoto's Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence or Gambino's elusive Bando Stone and The New World? Is it serious? Is it a comedy? A horror? A mockumentary? I felt that if The Weeknd had just picked one solid direction to take this project, it wouldn't have turned out so half-baked and boring.

Oh well, at least we got a pretty decent album out of it.