Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour

July 9 ONLY

Showtime  – 7 pm

Rated PG– 1hr 54min
Documentary / music

In recent years the concert film has become a bona fide cinematic event for super-fans wishing to relive the experience as well as those who draw the line at paying a month’s rent to see their favorite musician. In 2023, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour became the genre’s biggest-grossing film of all time, taking over $250m at the global box office. (Swift herself took home an estimated third of that figure thanks to an exclusive distribution deal with AMC Theaters). Beyoncé’s Renaissance film extended her album as a cultural moment, while this year Baz Luhrmann’s Epic: Elvis Presley in Concert has packed out multiplexes and a concert documentary from the K-pop boyband Stray Kids topped the global box office.

Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour is the biggest and most anticipated concert film since Swift’s: a reported $20m production co-directed by James Cameron and Eilish and billed as “reinventing the concert experience”. Cameron and his team filmed Eilish’s tour over four nights in Manchester, UK, last summer with 17 cameras strategically hidden around the singer’s stark, minimal stage, which is erected in the center of arenas. Without any of the dancers, costume changes or moveable set pieces of her A-list pop peers, Eilish’s show rests on her undeniable onstage magnetism and the near-religious devotion of her fans. The new film gives you more than a front-row seat to the show: it plunges you into the arena, swooping from the cheap seats to up close by Eilish’s side.

Eilish’s music connects with audiences powerfully, as the rare artist that gets plaudits from teens as much as industry gatekeepers (at 24 years old, she has 10 Grammy awards). The film is interspersed with interviews and earnest testimonials from fans about how Eilish’s music guided them through tough times, or helped them embrace who they are.

It’s impossible to imagine a pop star more distinct, more famous, yet more deserving of her stardom right now than Billie Eilish. At the tender age of 24, she’s already won numerous Grammys, scored several number one hits, and even snagged an Oscar (for a Bond theme song, no less!) before she was barely old enough to drink. And yet, for all her youthful vulnerability, she feels already so fully-formed: her shrugged-off rap-star aesthetic, the brilliantly layered ballads she co-writes with brother Finneas O’Connell, and, as the concert doc “Hit Me Hard and Soft” shows us, true skill as a show designer and filmmaker. Granted, she gets a little help in the form of an up-and-coming indie upstart by the name of James Cameron, and the decades of innovation he’s done in 3D filmmaking up to this point. But don’t get it twisted: This is Eilish’s show, and she knocks it out of the park.

If you’re looking for a straightforward spectacle featuring some of your favorite Billie Eilish songs, you’ll get it here. Luckily, we also get at least a little more of the woman behind the artist, even if it feels a bit curated. We see glimpses of her struggles with show injuries (she’s long had problems with shin splints and sprained ankles), heartfelt couchside confessions about the stresses of being a female artist in this landscape, and even a “puppy room” with local shelter dogs, which is evidently a ritual for each of her shows.

More than anything, Hit Me Hard and Soft feels like an ode to Eilish’s fanbase, who get plenty of screen time near the end to talk to the cameras about how much her music means to them. In some ways, it’s the typical fangirling you could expect of any Top 40 artist, but considering the outsider nature of Eilish’s key demographic—we see all kinds of young women and queer people with all manner of presentations—it’s impossible to dismiss these as the frivolous gushing of undiscerning teens.