Critic Reviews

The combo of Eilish’s stagecraft and Cameron’s filmmaking tools makes for a simply electrifying concert experience.

For those who just come for the music, “Hit Me Hard and Soft” hits the spot, covering most of her best songs, from “Chihiro” to “Everything I Wanted” and “Bad Guy,” while providing a limited yet fascinating window into Eilish’s workaday world.

“Hit Me Hard and Soft” is a concert film that doesn’t look and feel like other concert films. It’s a true experience, because of a combination of the show itself and the way that Cameron has filmed it.

Anyone who’s ever been to a great concert knows that it’s the very rare movie that can fully capture the transcendence of live performance. Hit Me Hard and Soft gets damn close thanks to the dual perspectives of its directors: The artist at the peak of her abilities, and the observer in awe of what he’s witnessing.

"Billie Eilish: Soft & Hard” is thrilling as a concert film, but its force comes from how carefully it maps the machinery behind the magic—the lighting choices, stage movements, emotional calibration, hidden pathways, and private moments of anticipation. It is vivid, immersive, and unusually personal, a portrait of a performer who understands the scale of her platform and still wants every person in the room to feel seen. For a film this massive, its most impressive trick is how close it comes to witnessing everyone.

With its vivid footage, sometimes captured from breathlessly intimate proximity, you might be able to believe, just for a moment, that you could really reach right through the screen and touch her.

Billie Eilish Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour Live in 3D is the result of two very innovative artists joining forces to combine their artistry and create one of the greatest concert movies to date. It is the magic of music and film.

The set list could use a few more upbeat numbers, but the project finds a heartfelt focus in the fans, who sob, snivel and bawl their way through loud, dramatic singalongs. Trembling manicured hands hold thousands of iPhones aloft.

Concert films are often an underwhelming proxy for a fine night out, but Cameron’s technical virtuosity and storytelling verve bring the whole shebang to life — as does shooting in 3D. I’m no Eilish superfan, but I enjoyed it a lot more than the last Avatar flick.

Apart from the confetti-cannon finale, this isn’t the hackneyed stereoscopic where things burst through the screen, but an immersive front row and on-stage spot at Billie Eilish’s 2025 world tour.