Tina Kakadelis
There’s a special bond between a teenage girl and her emotional-support rockstar. You can look at every generation and find the teen heartthrob of the day. You’ve got the likes of Elvis, The Beatles, David Cassidy, The Backstreet Boys, Justin Bieber, One Direction, BTS…the list goes on. Sweetness, which had its world premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival, is about one such heartthrob who has stolen the hearts of teenage girls around the world. One girl in particular, though, is willing to take that love to the extreme.
Rylee (Kate Hallett) is a lonely teenage girl. We first meet her in her bedroom, hunched over her phone watching a YouTube video about how to seduce a man. The man in question is Payton Adler (Herman Tømmeraas). He’s the frontman for the band Floor Plan and, like many rockers before him, he’s struggling with substance addiction. A relapse leads him to stealing a car and hitting one of the people leaving his latest concert. That person just so happens to be Rylee who, with a parent-free household for the weekend, decides to take it upon herself to help him through detox by handcuffing him to her bed frame.
Perhaps this is a more niche comparison, but Sweetness harkens back to the Lindsay Lohan-led Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. Both center on young, angsty teen girls who worship a rockstar figure they randomly get the chance to meet. The meeting doesn’t go to plan, but one of these movies was made by Disney and the other was not. Sweetness is Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen unchained by the constraints of Mickey Mouse. And that means Sweetness doesn’t get what might be considered a happy ending.
It’s very easy to write off Rylee’s increasingly reckless actions as signs that she’s unwell, and that would be true. She lost her mom at a young age and her dad (Justin Chatwin) basically treats her as a roommate he doesn’t want to talk to. Rylee has one friend, Sidney (Aya Furukawa), whose attention she’s losing to a boy. All Rylee has left is Payton’s music, so when she meets him and he’s nothing like the person he presents himself to be on stage, she loses it. Emma Higgins’ script is impressive because it takes a character who commits a shocking number of crimes throughout the course of the film and still makes her seem real. Being a teenager is hell on earth. You’re a swirling mess of emotions, and if there’s no paternal figure in your life to help you process things, you may just lock your favorite rockstar in your house. This is not excusing her actions, but Sweetness is unique in that it understands them. Sure, it blows things out of proportion and takes the plot to a wild extreme, but every single decision Rylee makes is one that a stupid, desperate, hurt teen would make.
Sweetness also looks at Payton and his addiction. The way we talk about fame today is changing. Actors are more open about refusing to take photos with fans while they’re doing their grocery shopping or walking the dog. That’s wholly within their right. As Payton says when Rylee confronts him about why he does drugs, for fans it’s one night, but for him it’s every single night. Fame seems so shiny and exciting, and it is, but it’s also a job. Sweetness is by no means advocating for drug use, but it seeks to make sense of why Payton, and others, turn in that direction. They’re trying to have a single moment when the weight of the world isn’t on their shoulders. Sweetness’ treatment of Payton is kind, and you’re not only rooting for him to get out of this predicament, but to take Rylee’s extremely misguided attempt as a new start.
The loneliness of adolescence is often unbearable. We find escapes in film, music, and video games. It’s at this age when loneliness can warp and twist itself into something nasty. Something sinister, all-consuming, and mean. Sweetness is the manifestation of the ability of that loneliness to turn people into the worst version of themselves. More than any of the compelling thematic ideas at work within the film, Sweetness is a fun, ever-shifting ride with a killer soundtrack sure to leave you speechless.
