Warning: Major spoilers for Hurry Up TomorrowHurry Up Tomorrow, the self-introspective companion movie to the latest album from Abel Tesfaye, AKA The Weeknd, blends dreams and reality in a semi-autobiographical thriller starring Jenna Ortega, Barry Keoghan, and Tesfaye as himself. The movie, which is now in theaters, follows Tesfaye while on tour, incapable of sleep and on the verge of a complete mental breakdown after his girlfriend left him, although the break-up was his own fault. The weight of his anxiety and stress has caused him to essentially lose his ability to sing (a real condition that The Weeknd suffered from, which inspired the movie).

In the midst of his on-stage breakdown, he makes eye contact with a mysterious young woman, Anima, who seeks him out backstage. They flee the arena together, and spend a night together enjoying the Santa Monica boardwalk, before spending a pᴀssionate night together in a H๏τel. Revitalized by his experience with Anima, Abel prepares to go back on tour without her, but a distraught Anima, feeling used and overwhelmed by loneliness, knocks him out and ties him up on the H๏τel bed. Abel wanders through a terrifying dream before waking to find himself at Anima’s mercy.

She tells him that she wants to get him to be honest with her and with himself, and plays some of his older music in an attempt to pinpoint the pain causing his self-destructive tendencies and his poor relationships with women. Lee arrives to rescue Abel and breaks into the H๏τel room, but Anima kills him after a brief struggle. A devastated Anima covers Abel and the H๏τel bed in gasoline, ready to set everything ablaze, but Abel begins singing “Hurry Up Tomorrow”, finally demonstrating his remorse and acceptance, causing Anima to set him free.

Was Anima Real?

Jenna Ortega’s Character Is Magnetic And Terrifying At The Same Time

Hurry Up Tomorrow (both the movie and its companion album), are intended to be self-introspective for Abel Tesfaye, and the movie visually demonstrates that self-examination in its entirety. As a result, none of what occurs (or very little of it) should be treated as reality. The entire odyssey that Abel goes on with Anima is not a literal journey out in the world, but rather a metaphor for his own journey through his psyche. As a result, Anima should not be viewed as a real person, but rather a representation of a part of Abel’s psyche.

Her name, Anima, is derived from the theories of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, who believed that there were several universal archetypes that comprised a person’s personality. The anima, per Jung, is the unconscious feminine side of a man’s mind ( an animus would be the male side of a woman’s mind). To embrace this part of his consciousness, a man must recognize and accept a desire for connection. So Jenna Ortega’s character Anima is a visceral metaphor for Abel’s inability to truly connect with women, and represents his toxic relationships from the past, the primary source of his distress.

What The Characters Of Hurry Up Tomorrow Represent

A Dip Into Psychology Unveils Symbolism

While Anima symbolized the portion of Abel’s psyche that could most closely be considered a soul, Lee represents something entirely different. Abel’s drug-snorting early version represents Jung’s theory of the Persona, the face that we present to the world, while Lee represents Jung’s theoretical Ego. However, the risk is that we can become only that archetypal person, leaving ourselves empty in other ways. Lee constantly told Abel in the midst of his breakdown that he was superhuman, truly special, better than others; this was the truth Abel wanted to believe.

Abel as a character represents the Self, the sum totality of our personality, encompᴀssing all the differernt parts of our psyche. When Hurry Up Tomorrow begins, Abel’s mind is completely fractured, which is why the characters of Lee and Anima manifest. The Id, or Ego (Lee), the hedonistic, playboy side of Abel is what led to his overall toxic relationship with women in general, and the final clash between Lee and Anima (the healthy acceptance of connection) is a metaphor for Abel reconciling himself, which is why we see Abel alone in the final scene back in the arena where he began.

What Happened In The Tunnel At The Bottom Of The Elevator

The Unsettling Scene Was Heavily Metaphorical

After Anima knocks him out with a liquor bottle, Abel finds himself alone in his H๏τel, and explores the area around to find it also empty. He attempts to go back upstairs to his room, only to find the elevator go to the basement of the H๏τel. It opens onto a pitch-black tunnel, in which Abel finds a terrifying feminine creature that pursues him to the end of the tunnel, where he finds a fire in the snow and a young child.

The entire episode is Abel’s journey into his repressed consciousness, an archetype referred to as The Shadow. It represents the memories that we choose to push down, typically because they are unpleasant, or would not be appropriate to present to the world. Abel has a moment in a bath tub where he is literally approached by a shadowy figure, which is a typical manifestation of sleep-paralysis, but also representative of the Shadow archetype.

What The Weeknd Said About Hurry Up Tomorrow’s Ending

Tesfaye Has Addressed The Dreamlike State Of The Movie

In an interview with The Fader, Tesfaye addressed the dreamy quality of the movie’s visuals, and the repeated moments of Abel feeling, or literally being, trapped. He related it back to sleep-paralysis, a condition that he suffers from in the real world; the symptoms Abel displays in Hurry Up Tomorrow as far as the insomnia and the self-induced, anxiety-driven loss of his voice were the inspiration for the movie. As he told The Fader:

One of the main concepts of this film is sleep paralysis. That is something that I was really dealing with, still am to this day, not as much as before, but they’re very vivid nightmares where you’re in bed and you’re half asleep, half awake. You’re aware of your surroundings, but you can’t move. You’re paralyzed for almost a minute. Sometimes you see a shadowy figure in the corner and you hear voices, sweet nothings. It’s saying nothing, but they’re voices.

Knowing that was his intent, Hurry Up Tomorrow‘s intense visual style and sometimes disturbing imagery makes a lot more sense. Tesfaye and director Trey Edward Shults certainly feel like they’ve managed to capture some of the worst elements of sleep paralysis for those who have never experienced it.

What The Director Said About Hurry Up Tomorrow’s Ending

Trey Edward Shults Has Spoken About The Movie’s Psychological Aspects

The Jungian influence on Hurry Up Tomorrow is fairly obvious if you know what you’re looking for. There is even an image of Carl Jung’s manuscript The Red Book shown burning in the H๏τel room towards the end of the movie, and Anima’s name is literally pulled from Jungian archetypes. With that said, director Trey Edward Shults was not firm in his interpretation of the movie’s ending, or the entirety of the movie itself. He notes the Jungian connections, but certainly hopes the audience can take more away from it. As he told Discussing Film:

If you want to reinterpret [Hurry Up Tomorrow] as a Jungian dream analysis, then maybe none of it actually happened. Maybe, it’s all kind of a dream… I don’t want to put a bow on everything for an audience. I want them to take their own things. You could talk about Abel as his character representing the self, The Weeknd representing the persona, his manager Lee (Barry Keoghan) representing the id and the ego, and Jenna Ortega representing the Anima and this confrontation Abel needs to have with himself.

The Real Meaning Of Hurry Up Tomorrow

The Movie Operates As The Weeknd’s Journey Towards Self-Acceptance

Hurry Up Tomorrow is intriguing in its examination of personality and the self through the lens of a real-life figure in Abel Tesfaye, otherwise known as The Weeknd. The Weeknd is currently in the process of coming up with a new stage name, so in that regard, Hurry Up Tomorrow acts almost like the death of The Weeknd as a persona. The hollowed-out shell of The Weeknd, the self-indulgent, arrogant ego of Lee, and the soulful love of Anima all come together by the end of Hurry Up Tomorrow, yielding a complete, connected individual in Abel.

Jung’s archetypes, by design, can be applied universally, so the ultimate lesson of accepting the whole of oneself to move forward is applicable to anyone who watches the movie. We are the sum of our experiences and memories; sticking firmly to the person that we wish the world to see can have disastrous consequences, and will keep us from truly moving forward. Seeing Abel Tesfaye’s psychological transformation played out in cinematic fashion in Hurry Up Tomorrow is certainly an entertaining way to digest more complex psychological theories.

Sources: Encyclopedia Brittanica, The Fader, Discussing Film