Sweetness: Teen Take on 'Misery' Is a Solid Canadian Thriller

By Chris Knight

Rating: A-

I went into Sweetness having watched the trailer and expecting a thriller. Then I was mildly put off that I’d been tricked, and it was just a teen drama. And then it tricked me a second time and turned into a thriller after all.

Sure, I’ve had the rug pulled out on me before. But I’ve never known a film to put it back in, just to yank it again.

Kate Hallett (Women Talking) stars as Rylee Hill, painfully shy, mildly bullied, and the biggest fan of a middling rock ’n’ roll band called Floorplan.

Her bedroom is plastered with a collage of images of its lead singer Peyton (Herman Tommeraas), whose moody lyrics and acknowledged past drug problems just add to his mystique and allure. Rylee gets Peyton, and she’s pretty sure he’d get her too.

She gets a chance to find out when she and best friend Sidney (Aya Furukawa) attend a Floorplan concert in their hometown. (Thunder Bay subs for fictional Ferndale, U.S.A. in this Canadian production.)

Briefly ditched by Sidney, Rylee has a run-in with her idol when he almost runs her over with his car. He offers to give her a lift home, but stops on the way to score some drugs, and then passes out on the drive, veering off the road.

For Rylee, it’s a perfect storm of coincidence. Her dad is away with his new girlfriend (her mom is dead) so the house is empty, but dad’s also a cop so she has access to handcuffs. Peyton awakes to find himself thoroughly secured to a teenaged girl’s bed, staring up at pictures of himself.

She calmly tells him she’s just going to keep him there until the drugs wear off. And then — well, can you say Misery?

What follows is a fantastic slow plunge into criminal mayhem, as Rylee convinces Sidney to go along with her plan — “We can only keep him a few hours,” says her friend, as though discussing a found puppy — and then carefully plots how to save Peyton from his demons, whether he wants her to or not. (And to be clear, he does not.)

Kathy Bates was in her 40s when she tied James Caan (who was even older) to a bed in Misery. Writer-director Emma Higgins’ take on the unbalanced, obsessed fan works very well with her younger cast.

This is particularly true with Hallett, who can slip into a deadpan performance that makes her unreadable to audience and characters alike. Does that surliness shroud saintliness or psychosis?

Wait and see.

Sweetness. Directed by Emma Higgins. Starring Kate Hallett, Herman Tommeraas, and Aya Furukawa. In theatres March 6.