Tomorrow is a cult film in the making
With concert films dominating the multiplex, it didn’t surprise me that The Weeknd AKA Abel Tesfaye who’s music already has a very cinematic language would try and make the jump to the big screen, but in his own way. While I personally spent two hours transfixed in pure cinematic phantasmagorical bliss, I think what he’s released, directed by Trey Edward Shults (It Comes at Night) will no doubt confound and confuse most casual fans. Hurry Up Tomorrow coincides with the release of his latest album of the same name and is an intense visceral and surreal deconstruction of fame, ego and addiction. The film has the artist who’s been publicly talking about retiring his Weeknd moniker, doing so in a visual tour de force that screams in neon and bleeds synth pop.
The film follows a fictionalized version of the singer playing himself on his current tour struggling to keep it together after a recent breakup. Plied with drugs and alcohol by his manager (Barry Keoghan) to keep on performing, we soon discover that all his years of toxic behavior have finally caught up to him and manifested itself in the singer losing his voice on stage due to stress – which really happened. This has The Weeknd fleeing a gig after the incident and into the arms of a gorgeous pyromaniac super-fan Anima (Jenna Ortega), which is also the psychological term for the feminine part of a man’s personality. Their one night tryst shockingly ends with Anima kidnapping her idol and forcing him to confront his darkness, all while delivering a stark Patrick Bateman-esque meta commentary on his career. Taking a page from The Wall, using the cinematic language of The Shining through the prism of Dario Argento, we witness a descent into madness in a hotel room, as Abel is tortured by the literal manifestation of everything he’s been running away from.
I personally found the uncompromising nature of the narrative structure and visual language of the film both metaphorically and visually a perfect match for anyone who’s fallen under the spell of the artist’s tortured lore. Over the years in building this character of The Weeknd Abel has openly shown his love for genre cinema, not only through his music and videos, but his disfigured alter egos and even a house at Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights. It’s a stark contrast to his more radio friendly pop tracks he’s known for, that if you listen close enough are all haunted by a darkness that the singer is exploring here on film. This works not only thanks to the gorgeous and densely layered visuals, but Abel lays himself bare in front of the camera, showing a vulnerability that is both uncomfortable and hard to ignore.
The film doesn’t feel like a vanity project, but a genuine narrative with some intriguingly interesting ideas it’s attempting to deconstruct and digest about fame and power by someone who’s experienced it first hand. Is it great to be a rock star, who’s rich and adored by millions? Sure it is sometimes, but what Abel is trying to say here it’s not that simple, at least in his case. We see the godlike singer ascend to a stadium full of adoring fans, but that can change in an instant, as the singer loses his voice and the audience immediately turns on him rendering him to nothing. That constant need for validation, birthed while trying to fill the void left by his absent father, placed the artist in a never ending loop of self destruction, isolation and vice needed to continue to fuel this creative spark, to write these songs that have made him one of the greatest musicians of our time.
Tomorrow is a cult film in the making that works not only as a piece of transgressive art, but as an artist leaving behind his hard partying persona and looking to the future. The film explores the price of fame and the toll of having to live up to the expectations placed before celebrities in this day and age, that will surprise most with its depth. The film also somehow manages to humanize and allow us as an audience to even empathize for brief periods, with The Weeknd – while not dulling his sharp edges. This is accomplished with a rich tapestry of visuals married perfectly to the artist’s tracks that tells a deeply personal story dodging the superficiality you’d expect, on its journey to get to the core of what inspires the artist and if he can survive it. While I hope folks will come out and discover Hurry Up Tomorrow in theaters — I personally can recommend the Dolby flavor enough, I feel like it will probably be recognized after the fact like most genre masterworks are.
