Hurry Up Tomorrow (2025) by Trey Edward Shults
US | 2025 | 105 min | Psychological Thriller
When the Person Behind the Superstar Begins to Disappear
A famous musician cannot sleep. His relationship is collapsing, his voice is under pressure and the machinery surrounding his career keeps moving. Then he meets Anima, a mysterious young woman whose arrival pulls him away from the controlled world of celebrity and into an increasingly unstable psychological journey.
Hurry Up Tomorrow uses a fictionalized version of The Weeknd to blur performer and character, reality and nightmare, Abel Tesfaye and the persona he created. What begins as celebrity exhaustion gradually becomes something more existential: what remains when the identity that made someone famous no longer feels like a place they can live?
➡️ Movie Insight: Hurry Up Tomorrow turns celebrity into a psychological maze. Fame has created Abel's identity while simultaneously making escape from that identity increasingly difficult. The superstar and the person underneath begin fighting for the same space.
Why This Movie Matters Right Now: When Success Cannot Protect You From Yourself
Celebrity culture usually presents success through what can be seen: audiences, money, recognition, access and influence. Hurry Up Tomorrow reverses that perspective by placing viewers behind the spectacle, where professional success coexists with insomnia, isolation, relationship breakdown and an increasingly unstable sense of self.
The movie does not suggest that fame explains every personal crisis. Instead, it uses celebrity as an amplifier: when your identity has become a public product, confronting who you are also means confronting the version of yourself consumed by millions of other people.
➡️ Why It Matters: Success can create opportunities without resolving the person experiencing them. Celebrity adds another complication because identity itself becomes public property. Hurry Up Tomorrow explores what happens when the person behind the persona can no longer comfortably inhabit it.
Should You Watch It?: A Surreal Celebrity Nightmare Rather Than a Conventional Thriller
Hurry Up Tomorrow is best approached as a psychological experience rather than a tightly plotted thriller. Trey Edward Shults uses insomnia, music, unstable perceptions and encounters with Anima to progressively weaken the boundaries between Abel's internal crisis and the reality surrounding him.
It is particularly suited to viewers interested in The Weeknd's creative mythology, celebrity psychology and visually driven films where interpretation matters more than straightforward answers. The polarized critical response also makes it a film likely to work very differently depending on how much viewers connect with its self-reflective approach.
➡️ Viewing Recommendation: Watch it for its descent into celebrity identity rather than conventional suspense. The film deliberately allows music, nightmare and reality to collide. Its central mystery is ultimately Abel himself.
Why Everyone Is Talking About It: When a Pop Superstar Turns His Own Persona Into a Movie
Hurry Up Tomorrow attracted attention because The Weeknd does not simply star in the film—he plays a fictionalized version of himself in a project connected to his album of the same name. Lionsgate described the movie as part of a wider creative ecosystem connecting film, music and live performance.
The response became another part of the conversation. The film grossed approximately $7.8 million worldwide against a reported $15 million budget, while its awards record includes five 2026 Razzie nominations and a Hawaii Film Critics Society Worst Film win. At the same time, its unusual combination of music, psychological thriller and celebrity self-fiction ensured that the project remained highly discussable rather than disappearing as a conventional underperformer.
➡️ Viral Potential: The Weeknd turning his own celebrity mythology into psychological fiction gives the movie an unusually personal hook. Its sharply divided reception adds another layer of conversation. Hurry Up Tomorrow becomes almost as interesting as a celebrity experiment as it is as a thriller.
Why Hurry Up Tomorrow Stands Out: The Superstar Is Also the Mystery
The film's most distinctive choice is making Abel Tesfaye play a fictionalized version of himself. That immediately destabilizes the boundary between biography and fiction: viewers recognize the performer, his music and elements of his public mythology while entering a story that progressively abandons straightforward reality.
Anima intensifies that instability. Rather than functioning simply as a mysterious stranger, she becomes part of Abel's confrontation with himself, his music and the persona through which other people understand him.
➡️ Cinema Insight: Hurry Up Tomorrow makes celebrity identity part of its storytelling structure. The audience already knows The Weeknd before the fictional story begins. The thriller then asks whether that recognizable persona reveals Abel or hides him.
Movie Trend: Psychological Thriller — When a Music Star Begins Losing His Grip on Reality
Psychological thrillers frequently destabilize perception until characters and audiences can no longer confidently separate external danger from internal crisis. Hurry Up Tomorrow places that instability inside the life of a global music star suffering from severe insomnia.
As Abel encounters Anima, reality becomes increasingly uncertain. Dreams, memories, fears, celebrity mythology and physical events begin occupying the same psychological space, transforming a musician's personal crisis into an unstable journey through identity.
Trend Formula:fame → insomnia → personal crisis → mysterious stranger → unstable reality → identity fractures → confrontation with self
➡️ Movie Trend: The psychological thriller becomes a journey through celebrity identity. Abel cannot trust everything he experiences because his internal and external worlds increasingly overlap. Losing control of reality becomes inseparable from losing control of the persona he created.
Broad Trend: Fame Has a Price — When Success Creates Pressures That Achievement Cannot Solve
Fame promises recognition, access and extraordinary success, but it also transforms private identity into something publicly consumed. For celebrities, the person and the persona can become increasingly difficult to separate.
Hurry Up Tomorrow explores that tension through a musician who has achieved enormous success but cannot escape himself. The greater his public identity becomes, the harder it is to determine where The Weeknd ends and Abel begins.
Broad Trend Formula:talent → success → fame → public persona → pressure → identity conflict → personal cost → fame has a price
➡️ Broad Trend: Fame can give someone everything they wanted while creating problems success cannot solve. Public recognition makes the private self increasingly difficult to protect. Hurry Up Tomorrow turns that contradiction into a psychological nightmare.
Why Celebrity Psychological Thrillers Are Popular: Audiences Want to See Behind the Persona
Celebrity normally reaches audiences through controlled surfaces—performances, interviews, photographs, social media and carefully constructed public identities. Stories that move behind those surfaces offer the opposite experience: access to insecurity, obsession, loneliness and identity conflict hidden beneath success.
➡️ Audience Motivation: Celebrity stories promise access to worlds most viewers cannot experience directly. Psychological thrillers make those worlds unstable rather than aspirational. The attraction comes from discovering what might exist behind the image everyone recognizes.
Viewer Profile: Puzzle Seekers - Viewers Choosing Psychological Thrillers Where Reality and Identity Keep Shifting
Puzzle Seekers enjoy films that require interpretation rather than simply revealing answers. Hurry Up Tomorrow continuously complicates the relationship between Abel, Anima, reality and the celebrity mythology surrounding its central character.
The music adds another interpretive layer because the film exists alongside The Weeknd's wider creative universe. Viewers familiar with his work can therefore read the story simultaneously as psychological thriller, celebrity fiction and artistic self-examination.
Audience Dimension | Profile |
Core Audience | Psychological thriller, music-film and The Weeknd audiences |
Age Group | Adult audiences |
Lifestyle | Music and entertainment culture followers interested in celebrity and identity |
Cinema Taste | Psychological thrillers, surreal dramas, music films and ambiguous narratives |
Streaming Behavior | Follows star-driven films, music-related projects and conversation-generating releases |
Discovery Mindset | Enjoys interpreting symbolism, unreliable reality and stories without simple explanations |
➡️ Audience Insight: Puzzle Seekers enjoy questioning what they are seeing. Hurry Up Tomorrow gives them a protagonist whose public identity already complicates the distinction between character and performer. Understanding Abel becomes part of understanding the film.
What This Movie Means for the Industry: Artists Are Building Worlds Across Entertainment Formats
Hurry Up Tomorrow was conceived as more than an isolated film. Its relationship with The Weeknd's album and touring ecosystem illustrates how musicians can extend creative identities across recordings, live performance and cinema rather than treating film as a separate promotional format.
That strategy also carries risk. A project deeply connected to an artist's existing mythology may provide fans with additional layers while creating a higher barrier for viewers without the same relationship to the artist.
➡️ Industry Insight: Music stars increasingly have opportunities to build stories across multiple entertainment formats. Film can deepen an artistic universe rather than merely promote an album. Hurry Up Tomorrow also demonstrates how difficult that crossover becomes when personal mythology replaces conventional storytelling.
Creative Analysis: Turning Celebrity Identity Into a Psychological Nightmare
Trey Edward Shults approaches the film less as a conventional backstage music drama and more as an unstable subjective experience. The story progressively removes the boundaries separating performance, insomnia, memory, desire and fear.
That approach makes celebrity itself part of the form. Abel lives inside an environment filled with images, music and people reflecting versions of himself back at him.
Storytelling: Making the Music Star the Central Mystery
The film begins with recognizable pressures—relationship problems, insomnia and professional demands—but gradually transforms them into an identity puzzle.
Instead of asking viewers primarily to discover what Anima wants, the story increasingly asks what Abel understands about himself. The external mystery becomes internal.
Direction: Making Reality Feel Less Reliable as Abel Loses Control
Shults uses Abel's insomnia as a natural doorway into psychological instability. Scenes increasingly acquire the logic of dreams and nightmares, making certainty difficult for both Abel and the audience.
That instability suits a story about identity. When Abel can no longer confidently understand the world around him, he also becomes less certain about the person occupying its center.
Performances: Placing a Fictionalized Superstar Opposite His Own Reflection
The Weeknd's performance has an unusual function because viewers bring their knowledge of the real performer into every scene. Abel Tesfaye is therefore simultaneously character, celebrity and reference point.
Jenna Ortega's Anima disrupts that identity while Barry Keoghan's Lee represents another relationship surrounding Abel's celebrity existence. Their characters pull him toward different understandings of who he is.
Visual Style: Turning Celebrity Life Into a Fever Dream
Cinematographer Chayse Irvin helps Shults create a subjective world where concerts, nightlife and private spaces increasingly feel psychologically connected rather than securely separated. Contemporary reviews repeatedly highlighted the movie's striking, dreamlike visual approach even when criticizing its narrative.
The visual instability mirrors Abel's condition. Fame initially looks spectacular, but spectacle gradually becomes disorientation.
Themes: What Happens When the Persona Becomes Bigger Than the Person?
The film's central identity question extends beyond whether Abel can survive his immediate crisis. It asks whether someone can separate themselves from an identity that has become enormously valuable to everyone around them.
The Weeknd is therefore more than Abel's profession. The persona becomes something he created, something audiences consume and something from which he may need to escape.
What Makes It Different: Turning a Real Pop Persona Into Psychological Fiction
Many music films fictionalize celebrity. Hurry Up Tomorrow reverses that process by taking one of the world's most recognizable music personas and placing a fictionalized version of its creator inside an explicitly psychological narrative.
That creates deliberate ambiguity. Viewers are never dealing exclusively with a fictional musician because the real artist remains visible underneath him.
➡️ Creative Insight: Hurry Up Tomorrow makes the gap between artist and persona its most distinctive creative device. The Weeknd's existing mythology becomes material for the thriller. Fame stops being background and becomes part of Abel's psychological trap.
If You Liked Hurry Up Tomorrow (2025): Fame, Identity and Psychological Breakdown
Smile 2 (2024) by Parker Finn: When Pop Stardom Makes Psychological Terror Impossible to Escape
Global pop star Skye Riley prepares for a major tour while increasingly terrifying experiences destroy her ability to distinguish public performance from private psychological collapse.
➡️ Why It Connects: Both films place psychological instability inside the highly controlled world of pop celebrity. Public performance continues while the central character privately loses control. Fame magnifies rather than protects them from the crisis.
Better Man (2024) by Michael Gracey: When Stardom Cannot Resolve the Person Behind the Performer
Robbie Williams' rise to global fame becomes a story about insecurity, addiction, relationships and the psychological pressures hidden beneath enormous success.
➡️ Why It Connects: Both films look behind the spectacle of music stardom. Public success exists beside a much less controlled private identity. Fame becomes part of the problem rather than evidence that everything is going well.
The Substance (2024) by Coralie Fargeat: When Staying Famous Means Fighting the Person You Have Become
A celebrity facing professional rejection embraces a radical opportunity to create a younger version of herself, turning the pressure to remain desirable into increasingly destructive body horror.
➡️ Why It Connects: Both films explore identities shaped by audiences and entertainment industries. Their protagonists struggle with the distance between the person they are and the image expected from them. Celebrity becomes dangerous when maintaining the persona begins destroying the self.
➡️ If You Liked Insight: These films look behind celebrity as aspiration and focus on its psychological cost. Public success intensifies private conflicts rather than automatically resolving them. The person behind the famous image becomes the real story.
Final Verdict: When the Biggest Role Is the Person Everyone Thinks You Are
Hurry Up Tomorrow is less interested in explaining celebrity than turning it into an unstable psychological environment. Abel's insomnia, Anima's arrival and the collision between dreams and reality gradually transform the recognizable world of a superstar into a crisis over who that superstar actually is.
Its unusual strength lies in the overlap between fiction and an existing celebrity persona. Whether viewers embrace that self-reflective approach or find it too inward-looking will strongly shape their response, which helps explain the film's unusually polarized reception.
➡️ Final Verdict: Hurry Up Tomorrow treats fame as both achievement and psychological burden. Abel has built a persona recognized around the world but can no longer comfortably separate himself from it. The nightmare begins when escaping The Weeknd also means confronting Abel.
Quick Facts: An Insomniac Music Superstar Meets a Mysterious Stranger Who Begins Unraveling Everything He Believes About Himself
Director | Trey Edward Shults |
Screenplay | Trey Edward Shults / The Weeknd / Reza Fahim |
Lead Cast | The Weeknd / Jenna Ortega / Barry Keoghan |
Central Roles | The Weeknd — Abel / Jenna Ortega — Anima / Barry Keoghan — Lee |
Country | United States |
Year | 2025 |
Runtime | 105 min |
Genre | Psychological Thriller |
Language | English |
Cinematography | Chayse Irvin |
Editing | Trey Edward Shults |
Music | The Weeknd / Daniel Lopatin |
Production Design | Elliott Hostetter |
Production | Lionsgate / Manic Phase / Live Nation Productions |
Producers | Kevin Turen / Harrison Kreiss / The Weeknd / Reza Fahim |
Awards & Recognition | 1 win / 9 nominations |
Movie Trend | Psychological Thriller — When a Music Star Begins Losing His Grip on Reality |
Broad Trend | Fame Has a Price — When Success Creates Pressures That Achievement Cannot Solve |
Central Character | Abel |
Core Conflict | An insomniac superstar encounters a mysterious woman as his reality and sense of self begin breaking down |
Creative Hook | The Weeknd plays a fictionalized version of himself inside a psychological thriller connected to his music |
Core Themes | Fame / identity / insomnia / celebrity / obsession / self-destruction / artistic persona |
Why Watch | A surreal psychological thriller that turns the boundary between a global superstar and his public persona into the central mystery |
Final Insights: Success Does Not Make the Person Behind the Persona Disappear
Fame Has a Price works here because Hurry Up Tomorrow is not fundamentally making a broad argument about modern social pressure. Its world is unusually specific: extreme celebrity, artistic identity and the psychological consequences of becoming a persona recognized by millions.
That specificity is also what makes the story interesting. Fame promises the possibility of becoming unforgettable, but the film explores the opposite danger—the possibility that the public identity becomes so powerful that the private person struggles to exist independently from it.
➡️ Final Insight: Fame transforms identity as well as opportunity. The more valuable the public persona becomes, the harder separating from it can be. Hurry Up Tomorrow turns that price into a psychological nightmare.
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