Back in 2019, I was absolutely blown away by Trey Edward Shults' third feature film “Waves”, so much so that I named it my favourite film of that entire year. It was such a powerful and painful experience watching it, as the film is about a family navigating love, forgiveness and coming back together as one, after experiencing a devastating loss. It is filled to the brim with outstanding performances, and situations that are so honestly handled, that I was unprepared for how much of an emotional experience “Waves” turned out to be. It is such a devastating watch, but as a film, I personally think it is something of a masterpiece. Prior to “Waves”, I was a fan of Shults' previous two films, “Krisha” (2015) and “It Comes at Night” (2017), but this was next level stuff. To say that I was eagerly anticipating whatever Shults was going to do next would be a massive understatement, but sadly there was radio silence for years. Suddenly, one day on imdb, under Shults' directing credits, showed up a mysterious listing for an “Untitled Trey Edward Shults / The Weekend Film”, which also stated that the film was already in post-production. Even though there was nothing else to go on, I started to get excited. However, more years passed and the untitled film never showed up in cinemas, which got me thinking that it may have been a “phantom” project, one that was due to be made, but that ultimately fell through. Suddenly, out of the blue, the film had a title and a release date, which was also not far away. The film existed, and was coming out soon.
Anyone who has read this blog should know that I know little about music, so I had no previous knowledge of who “The Weekend” was, nor any of his songs, nor the fact that he also had a recent album titled “Hurry Up Tomorrow”, which was to tie-in with the movie (all of which my 18 year old daughter did know, which I found out after the fact). To be honest, this lack of knowledge did not bother me, as I was going to be there for Trey Edward Shults' work, not The Weekend's. What I hadn't prepared for was the fact that The Weekend essentially would overpower the project and whatever Shults' was to bring towards it, would ultimately be diluted, so that The Weekend and the story he wanted to tell was the only star of the film.
Anyway, whilst I had started to have some misgivings about “Hurry Up Tomorrow” (the early reviews were not kind to the film), I was still in the cinema the first session of opening day......and I was the only soul in there. Yeesh! Not a good sign at all, but in all honesty it was all the film deserved, as “Hurry Up Tomorrow” was nothing short of a disaster. The imdb describes the film like so: “An insomniac musician encounters a mysterious stranger, leading to a journey that challenges everything he knows about himself.” Well I guess that does happen, but the film also is filled with moments that mean little, and make even less sense. It almost becomes like an audio-visual experiment, rather than a movie, as images appear on screen that are hard to comprehend, being used symbolically rather than in a narrative function, and it is very hard to unlock and find a way to enter the world of the film. One of the worst aspects of “Hurry Up Tomorrow” is that The Weekend has no acting ability at all, and is just deplorable throughout the film. He cannot portray a single genuine emotion, so the whole things feels ham-fisted and forced. Jenna Ortega's character is also baffling, as is her journey and connection to The Weekend's character. We watch her set fire to a house early on in the film, but we never understand why she does this, nor why she has a weird connection to The Weekend. Again, I think her role is symbolic, and this is because of her name which is Anima, which in psychoanalysis is the word given to the feminine part of a man's personality. So my theory is that Anima doesn't really exist, but is a part of The Weekend himself, which would make sense as the film just feels like one big ode to him. He overwhelms the entire film, and his constant presence suffocates any chance of a real story being told in “Hurry Up Tomorrow”. I get that it is not meant to be a traditional movie, and that it is something of an experience, one that is surreal and strange, but the whole thing is also so very vague and confusing that you find it very hard to care about anything that is on the screen. By the end, it felt so pointless too, and when the credits did finally roll, I was like “yeah, and.......”.
I will say that Trey Edward Shults' does come up with some nice images from time to time in “Hurry Up Tomorrow”, and Barry Keoghan is quite good in his small role (thank god for natural charisma) as The Weekend's manager, trying to get the singer up and ready for his music tour and over his phobias, but for the most part sitting through the film was an absolute chore. Personally, I was devastated that Shults' chose to make “Hurry Up Tomorrow” as his follow-up to his emotional masterpiece “Waves”, particularly because it is almost the opposite of that far superior film which was filled with absolute honesty and devastating pain, whilst “Hurry Up Tomorrow” is filled with manufactured and manipulated emotions that never once came close to exhibiting a real truth.
History has not been kind to “Hurry Up Tomorrow” already, as it has been almost instantly forgotten, and I have to say that it only ended up staying in cinemas here in Australia for that one week.
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