Abel Tesfaye & Jenna Ortega Star

Like many an American, I dreamt of becoming a rock star in my younger days. Those aspirations went no further than mastering the intricacies of air guitar, but it was probably for the best. After all, if you believe Hurry Up Tomorrow, the new drama co-written by and starring Abel Tesfaye, better known as The Weeknd, being a world-famous music superstar really, really sucks. Apparently, you can barely get through a day without crying, which he does so often in this film that you become concerned for his hydration.  

Late in the proceedings, there’s a scene in which Tesfaye, playing a version of himself (always the case in this type of film), is tied up on a bed while a deranged fan played by Jenna Ortega dances to his songs and offers deconstructions of their meaning. Gagged and helpless, all he can do is agonizingly suffer through it. It’s very much akin to the experience of sitting through this film directed by Trey Edward Shults (Waves, It Comes at Night), which proves a stultifying watch that could probably only be appreciated by the singer’s most ardent fans.

This is the sort of movie in which even the opening credits, which continue until nearly the half-hour mark, are unbearably pretentious. And those come after an onscreen warning about strobe effects, a short music video, and a commercial for The Weeknd’s new album of the same name for which this film is essentially a feature-length promotion.  

The amorphous narrative, which frequently veers into surrealism and suffers from a severe case of symbolism, mainly concerns the existential angst being suffered by its star, reeling from a recent break-up with a girlfriend (voiced by Riley Keough) whom we hear on numerous voicemails. He’s desperately trying to get her back, leaving her pleading messages to no avail. His emotional stress has begun to affect his voice, with a doctor strongly recommending a long period of vocal rest. This doesn’t sit well with Lee (Barry Keoghan), Tesfaye’s ever-present friend and manager, who provides mood-altering drugs whenever necessary.

The other major character in the strangely unpopulated storyline is Anima (Ortega), first seen setting fire to a remote house in a wintry landscape. She turns out to be a huge fan of The Weeknd, and the pair make eye contact while she’s in the audience at his concert in a sold-out arena. She manages to sneak backstage and they wind up going out for a happy night on the town together, complete with a visit to an amusement park (there’s nothing like a ride on a roller coaster to ease a pop star’s troubles) and winding up in his hotel room. Bad things happen from there, with Anima having apparently watched Misery one too many times.

Along the way we see Tesfaye crying in his private jet, crying in his bathtub, crying in his hotel room, and frequently taking hits from his inhaler. At one point, Anima cries while listening to a demo of his newest song. It all seems a bit much. There are more than a few emotive Weeknd tracks, to be sure, but you get the feeling this movie wouldn’t exist if enough anti-depressants had been prescribed.

Shults is a talented filmmaker and succeeds in sustaining an ominous mood, complete with haunting visuals, even if some of them are of the hackneyed variety (when Tesfaye wanders through a deserted urban landscape, you begin looking for zombies to pop into the frame). But the screenplay, co-written by Tesfaye, Shults and Reza Fahim, is so devoid of humor and self-awareness that it makes such similarly misbegotten musician star vehicles as Renaldo and Clara, Under the Cherry Moon and Give My Regards to Broad Street seem like masterpieces.

As an actor, Tesfaye makes a great singer, with the film featuring so many intense close-ups of his anguished-looking face that Garbo would have been jealous. Ortega and Keoghan do what they can, investing their thinly written characters with intense energy. But their hard-working efforts are not enough to make Hurry Up Tomorrow anything more than a huge ego trip for its star. After this and HBO’s short-lived The Idol, some career counseling might be in order.