Review: I Watched The Weeknd’s Film Debut So You Don’t Have To

HBO’s The Idol was a television series so outrageously bad, Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye was laughed off our screens. Until now.

“Hurry Up Tomorrow” is a 2025 American musical psychological thriller directed and edited by Trey Edward Shults. Conceived as a companion piece to Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye’s sixth studio album of the same name, Shults co-wrote the screenplay with Tesfaye and Reza Fahim. Tesfaye stars as a fictionalized version of himself, an insomniac musician on the verge of a mental breakdown who is pulled into an existential odyssey by a mysterious stranger. 

“Hurry Up Tomorrow” is soulless, exhausting, and painfully forced. It’s essentially a feature-length commercial for an album that blows through its hits in the first five minutes. From there, it becomes all style with no substance.

There was a groan in the theater—my own—when Jenna Ortega’s character quoted “American Psycho” while talking about Weeknd songs. That’s the kind of film we’re dealing with. “Hurry Up Tomorrow” loses itself trying to imitate better films. It pretends to be something deep or dangerous, but the people involved simply do not have the talent to pull it off.

There are multiple moments in the film where you just give up caring. One of them comes when Barry Keoghan’s character reminisces to The Weeknd about their friendship, claiming they “met in school” and somehow a teenage Weeknd took Barry in from Ireland? “Hurry Up Tomorrow” stretches its nonexistent plot thinner than it already was.

Jenna Ortega plays Anima, a terribly written character. We first see her burning down a house, which is never explained or even mentioned again. The only form of backstory we get is a 30-second phone call with her mom. Trey Edward Shults, why should we care about this random woman? What is her fascination with The Weeknd? All of this, which should have been the entire plot of “Hurry Up Tomorrow”, is never touched upon.

The Weeknd could be an actor if he really wanted to be, but this is not the path. He can’t handle these types of roles, just like he couldn’t in The Idol. The only moments that work are when Abel Tesfaye is just being himself. Not playing “The Weeknd.” Just talking like a guy.

No one in the film is particularly good. Jenna Ortega is stuck with stiff, clunky dialogue that feels written by a robot trying to imitate George Lucas. Barry Keoghan is doing his usual thing. And The Weeknd is doing something… but I couldn’t tell you what.

In the end, “Hurry Up Tomorrow” is a glossy vanity reel pretending to be a movie. A project with nothing to say, no reason to exist, and no idea what it’s even trying to be. Hurry up and forget it.