Movies of War

1 of 3 2 of 3 Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday. Sign up for our free newsletter. Emily Higgins first dreamt up Sweetness over a decade ago, while she was working at Vancouver’s 604 Records.“Being in the world of music was the inspiration,” she says over a video call with the Straight.If you’ve seen the film, which deftly rides the line between horror and thriller, that could be read as a little disheartening for anyone aspiring to join that particular industry. But Higgins remembers her time at the Jonathan Simkin-run record label fondly.“It was a good time—it was before social media and all that, but we still needed video content,” Higgins recalls. “I had a DSLR and would shoot updates from the studio with Nickelback being like, ‘Our album is coming out this date!’ ”She started working on music videos, sweeping up confetti on Michael Bublé’s sets and doing stop-motion animation on early Mother Mother songs.“It was kind of the auxiliary part of the job, where Jonathan was like, ‘It’s not your official job, but you can do music videos as well,’ ” Higgins says. “I wanted to be a director and because I had access to the bands, I’d pitch them stuff.”Higgins went on to direct dozens of music videos for established acts like Jessie Reyez, Marianas Trench, Dear Rouge, and Tegan and Sara, getting nominated for three Junos and winning one for Reyez’s “NO ONE’S IN THE ROOM”.Some 12 years ago, she penned the first draft of Sweetness, a feature film that follows a teenage girl named Rylee (Kate Hallett) who lives in a small town and is obsessed with Payton Adler (Herman Tømmeraas), the Harry Styles–esque frontman of a band called Floorplan. When Rylee has a chance encounter with Adler, she discovers that he has a drug problem and attempts to fix him by tying him to her bed and forcing him to experience withdrawal. It only gets darker from there.“I will not admit to any kidnapping, for the record, but yeah, a lot of it was autobiographical,” Higgins says with a laugh. “The movie is so many different people, but you have to bring in a bit of yourself—that’s the only way to emphasize or get into the story. I realized how much more of me was in it when we were making it—that need for love, trying to fix people, trying to find love in the wrong places. I started going, ‘Oh no, this is familiar.’ ” Emily Higgins has gone from shooting pop stars in Vancouver to torturing teen pop stars in Fernvale. Sweetness was filmed in North Bay, Ontario, where Higgins was able to get the credits to make the movie, but it plays Fernvale, a fictional coastal locale that is a reference to Ferndale, a town close to the B.C.-Washington border.In the film, we meet a host of characters, including Rylee’s best friend Sidney (The Midnight Club’s Ara Furukawa), her police officer dad (B.C. actor Justin Chatwin of Shameless), her stepmom Marnie (The Handmaid’s Tale’s Amanda Brugel), and Adler’s handler John, played by veteran Canadian actor Steven Ogg with his trademark creepiness. But the movie rides on Hallett, who plays Rylee, to both ground the main character and make her descent into darkness believable.“This movie doesn’t work without someone who can carry a very nuanced performance,” says Higgins about Hallett, who is on the same video call.Hallett is from Alberta and previously appeared in 2022’s Women Talking.“I went a little bit crazy in the prep period, just because I wanted to make Emma proud,” Hallett says. “There was a lot of work in finding her physicality and building her background. There were definitely some difficult days that were very exhausting, but that’s the kind of work I really enjoy.”Hallett leaned on films like Promising Young Woman and Gone Girl in her research.“Carey Mulligan and Rosamund Pike in those films are examples of a female protagonist that does some morally questionable things, but you’re still rooting for them,” Hallett says. “Getting into the head of somebody who doesn’t see morality in the same way.”That question has become central to the film—who are you actually rooting for?“It’s divided. We ask audiences after screenings who is Team Rylee and who’s not,” Higgins says. “A lot of people are like, ‘Good for her,’ and the other half say, ‘Uh, no... it’s awful.’ I’m Team Rylee myself.”Shocking.Sweetness is in theatres on March 6. Video of Sweetness - Official Trailer (2026) Kate Hallett, Herman Tømmeraas, Aya Furukawa Join the discussion Facebook comments not loading? Please check your browser settings to ensure that it is not blocking Facebook from running on straight.com