Boy band obsession is a storied and decades-long tradition that continues to this day. From Boyz II Men, Backstreet Boys, and N’Sync to Jonas Brothers and One Direction, they populated the pages of J-14 and Tiger Beat and adorned the walls of many a bedroom.
The method of consumption has changed – CDs to streaming, magazines to social media – but teenage obsession is still alive and well, instead rebranded as the much more palatable, but even more deeply toxic “stanning,” a term inspired by Eminem’s song “Stan.”

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Celebrity Obsession Turns Into “Bone-Chilling Horror” In Dark Coming-Of-Age Tale Sweetness

ScreenRant speaks to Emma Higgins, Kate Hallett, Herman Tømmeraas, Aya Furukawa, Justin Chatwin, and Amanda Brugel about Sweetness at SXSW.

Sweetness takes this concept and runs with it, becoming a demented tale about the effect this kind of infatuation can have on a mind so infected with loneliness that it can no longer understand the difference between right and wrong.
Sweetness Is Sick, Savvy & Unhinged

It Feels Like A Modern Day Misery

In Sweetness, Kate Hallett stars as Rylee, a young girl obsessed with the band Floorplan, mistakenly called Floodplane by various characters in the film. Magazine cutouts and posters of the band’s lead singer Payton (Herman Tømmeraas) are plastered all over Rylee’s bedroom walls.
The film opens with her kneeling on her bed as if in worship. Payton is Rylee’s religion, Floorplan’s songs her bible. But religion often drives people to do crazy things, especially for someone like Rylee. No one at school talks to her, nor do they understand the deep grief she carries with her after her mother’s death.

Hallett’s committed performance is both detached and disturbed, her eyes glowing with the obsession roiling inside Rylee.

Floorplan saved her life. And so, when Rylee gets to live out every girl’s dream by attending a Floorplan concert and scoring the coveted barricade position, it feels like she’s made it. Floorplan isn’t some massive, global superstar band. The venue itself looks like the size of a House of Blues but, if anything, this speaks to the specificity of this concept and that, no matter how big or how small, an artist is a supernova to at least one person.
It’s immediately clear from the film’s tense score by Blitz//Berlin that this won’t be anything but horrific and Sweetness more than follows through on this promise. Director Emma Higgins’ vision also lends itself to a creeping sort of ugliness set against a flowery, kitschy suburbia.
Rylee’s Floorplan concert will end up changing her life, but not in ways she would ever expect. After a chance encounter with Payton, Rylee learns that her idol is still using drugs after proclaiming to be sober. She decides to take it upon herself to sober him up, but this spirals out of control in ways that he or Rylee could’ve never imagined.
Hallett’s committed performance is both detached and disturbed, her eyes glowing with the obsession roiling inside Rylee. She clearly believes that what she is doing is the right thing and, even when the creeping feeling of wrongdoing begins to seep in, she knows she’s gone too far to go back.
Sweetness is Misery for the pop star age, a deliriously violent and funny look at the destructiveness of parasocial relationships on the adolescent psyche. Rylee is impulsive and reckless in her attempts at pacifying Payton. There’s no exit plan, just the idea that maybe, just maybe, Payton will forgive her once he’s sober.
Sweetness premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival.

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Sweetness

7/10

Release Date

March 7, 2025