By Michael Marano

Director James Cameron’s 3D concert film captures the awe, pressure, and near-religious devotion of Billie Eilish’s fanbase.

Billie Eilish–Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D), directed by James Cameron, begins screening on May 8 with an exclusive three-day run at AMC theaters from May 8 through 10.

James Cameron and Billie Eilish conferring during the making of Billie Eilish–Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D).

Since 2009, James Cameron has utterly failed to take me to other worlds or to expose me to different cultures. He’s been faceplanting. His Avatar movies give me splitting headaches no matter what format or platform I try to view them on, which suggests there may be a physiological component to the director’s inability to whisk me away to new vistas and strange new dimensions. The supposed visual grandeur of his Avatar films simply can’t compare to the sublimity I experienced as a teenager, staring at Roger Dean record covers while taking hits flavored with residual Dorito dust and the distinct tang of a bong fashioned from a 7Up can. Other cultures? Yeah—sorry to the Na’vi. But I’ve seen FernGully. And The Smurfs. And A Man Called Horse. And Dances with Wolves. And…

But in the new documentary/concert film Billie Eilish—Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D), Cameron and his co-director (Eilish herself) whisk me away on a First Contact mission that rivals any undertaken by Starfleet. Eilish fandom is just as—if not more—passionate than Taylor Swift fandom. It’s almost a way of life that I couldn’t have imagined before seeing this movie; the film serves as a huge eye-opener for this creaky Gen X dude who, even though he’s not a dad, has reached the age when he thinks dad jokes are the apex of human achievement.

Not kidding—I felt like I was intruding on a religious service while watching Hit Me Hard and Soft. Eilish’s fans have such an intensely personal connection to her that, for outsiders, their level of passion can be daunting. I couldn’t possibly tell you how many shots there are in this movie of fans with tears streaming down their faces. It would be too easy to make comparisons to the Beatles’ fan base, or Elvis’s, or Sinatra’s. I think what we’re dealing with here is a modern iteration of Lisztomania—the near-ecstatic frenzies that swept Europe in the 1840s whenever Franz Liszt toured. German writer, poet, and critic Heinrich Heine observed that the worship was near-mystical. A number of Eilish’s fans are interviewed in the film and say that her music saved their lives. The relationship feels transcendental, which makes it more than a little intimidating for an outsider to write about.

Singer Billie Eilish in a scene from Billie Eilish–Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D)

I make this point because, throughout Hit Me Hard and Soft, it’s not just the enthusiastic presence of Eilish’s fans in the audience and around the concert venue that overwhelms—it’s their adoration. That adoration has a weight; it’s a pressure as constant as the weight of the ocean on the bulkheads of the undersea habitat in Cameron’s The Abyss. Eilish is hyperaware of her followers and of her responsibility to them. She speaks to Cameron on camera about her art and her fans, and this forms part of the film’s larger, genuinely intriguing narrative arc.

The most interesting parts of Hit Me Hard and Soft are the revelations of stagecraft that Eilish and Cameron present to the audience: the means by which Eilish attaches herself to safety harnesses so she can perform a hundred feet or so above the main stage; the sneaky way she reaches that stage unseen by tens of thousands of fans; the almost subterranean way she slips from one end of the Indy 500–racetrack-sized performance area to the other. The result is a paradox: Eilish and Cameron seem intent on stripping away the rock-star mystique, yet at the same time they enhance its power. The spectacular stage mechanics reflect Eilish’s sense of responsibility to her fans; she is summoning her acolytes to a holy site, as if they were pilgrims called to a service. The performer does not want to disappoint.

As for the show itself, it’s a pretty amazing display of showmanship, both in terms of the concert and in how Cameron, his crew, and Eilish shoot it (the performer periodically takes up handheld cameras throughout the movie). The use of 3D is immersive but not intrusive, establishing a vivid sense of place and scale.

It’s a sense of real scale and real place that has been missing from Cameron’s movies since 2009. He’s spent so much time “filming” in nonexistent digital environments that it’s easy to forget he knows how to line up a shot in physical space.

Billie Eilish—Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) is a deft, artful documentary about an artist’s work. It somehow manages to demystify that work while also amplifying the performer’s allure. It also demystifies James Cameron, pulling him out of the digital, hyper-expensive (un)reality in which he’s labored for almost 20 years. There’s real skill on display here, and even if you’re not a True Eilish Believer, you can still marvel at—and enjoy—that mastery.

Before Hit Me Hard and Soft, author, critic, and personal trainer Michael Marano hasn’t really enjoyed a James Cameron movie since True Lies.