1 of 5 | Billie Eilish stars in and co-directs “Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft – The Tour in 3D,” in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures
Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft – The Tour Live in 3D, captures the energy of Eilish’s concert. With occasional peeks behind the scenes, it highlights what goes into the performance and what it means to her fans.
As soon as the lights go down, thousands of phones light up, so the film already captures what it is like to go to a concert in 2026. Co-director James Cameron’s cameras practically zoom in on the red record button on iPhones, but Eilish encourages people to wave their phone lights at other times.
What’s striking about Eilish’s stage presence, compared to filmed concerts like Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, is how casual she is in front of tens of thousands of people. She is graceful in both her aggressive and subtle physical moves.
It is a well paced show balancing fast songs with ballads, and acoustic sets with full production. In one moment, Eilish harmonizes with herself on a recorded loop which only works if the stadium is silent, so her ability to quiet the arena is even more impressive than the other 113 minutes of raucous fanfare.
The stage is sparse. Her band and backup singers sit in lowered decks, leaving a long rectangle across which Eilish bounds back and forth to include everyone in the audience.
The film warns of strobe lights, but they’re rather unobtrusive with the 3D. Eilish later explains that every song has a specific color.
Directed by Eilish and Cameron, the first intimate secret shared is the box she sits in while her roadies wheel her under the stage. This way, nobody sees her until the show begins, but movie viewers get to see her point of view looking out the eye holes.
Eilish reveals she sprained her ankle just before the tour, so she does vocal warmups while getting her ankles taped. Later, she grabs a handheld camera on stage and highlights her band.
Some fans camp out under her hotel room and she interacts with them. Cameras capture some personal stories of fans for whom Eilish’s music got them through dark times.
Cameron interviews Eilish before the show. You can tell he recognizes a fellow creative, as well as an empowered and empowering woman.
He doesn’t say she’s like Sarah Connor in The Terminator or Ripley in Aliens, but he celebrates those qualities through which Eilish controls her own narrative.
Eilish mugs for the cameras and hypes up the 3D, which must have endeared her to Cameron. The sound mix maintains her vocals and the melody during the concert portions.
For fans who couldn’t get tickets to a live show, or for any who want to experience it again, Hit Me Hard and Soft translates the live energy into cinema.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
