All 13 R-Rated Sydney Sweeney Movies, Ranked

In 2027, The Housemaid’s Secret will confirm Sydney Sweeney as the queen of R-rated movies if it surpasses the impressive box office performance of the original - and there’s a good chance of that happening. And it’s not by accident: over her 17-year career, so far, she’s made 13 R-rated movies, across multiple genres, and some have been the best work she’s done. While most modern A-listers tend to lean away from the more adult end of the rating spectrum and the box office comfort of PG-13s and superheroes and safe IP, Sweeney has continued to fly the R-rated flag. Even after she made her Marvel bow in the unfortunate Madame Web. She’s become a household name while half of the world’s household occupants aren’t even old enough to watch some of her most impressive performances. Sweeney embraces adult storytelling, erotic energy, and explicit thrillers, reflecting the vibe of her breakout role in Euphoria, which earned its TV-MA rating hard, and the equally grown-up The White Lotus. And she’s got not only The Housemaid’s sequel, but also erotic fantasy Hollow!, Edgar Wright's Barbarella, and David Bruckner’s The Caretaker coming in the next few years, and all likely to earn an R. Strictly speaking, her R-rated resume should include some more entries, but officially, Nocturne (2020), Clementine (2019), Along Came the Devil (2018), and creature feature Dead Ant (2017) all skipped standard theatrical classification, but would all likely have been given R-ratings. Even without them, she’s still made a lot of them, so here’s every official R-rated movie of Sydney Sweeney's career so far, ranked from worst to the very best. Starting with one you've definitely never seen. And possibly for good reason. 13 ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction (2009) Long before she was appearing in major studio releases, Sweeney made her debut, aged just 11, in low-budget zombie schlock ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction, from director Kevin Hamedani. It’s notable solely for the fact that it includes her first screen performance - and it’s a brief one as a child victim called Lisa - and while she told Jimmy Fallon she was extremely excited at the time, Sweeney also admitted she hasn’t even seen it. It’s a misguided political parody that is both unfunny and bafflingly high-rated on Rotten Tomatoes (at 60%, it’s overrated). 12 The Ward (2011) While John Carpenter is a legend of horror cinema, his final movie was a shadow of his best work. Released in 2010, and at least partly to blame for Carpenter’s withdrawal from film-making, The Ward is a 1960s-set ghost story set on a haunted psych ward, where Amber Heard’s troubled patient is terrorized by the vengeful ghost of another murdered patient. The story - which comes with a genuinely smart twist that was rather undermined by James Mangold’s Identity doing the same thing 7 years earlier - isn’t bad, and there are some good shocks, but it’s all very paint-by-numbers, and it’s not up to the quality of its constituent parts. Sweeney plays the young version of the tragic killer and appears only briefly in one of her earliest roles. So, good for completionists, but bad for horror movie fans. 11 Echo Valley (2025) In Echo Valley, Sweeney stars opposite Julianne Moore as her troubled (there’s a trend emerging here) daughter, who turns up on her doorstep covered in someone else’s blood when her past catches up to her. What follows is an occasionally violent thriller with an excellent cast (also including Domhnall Gleeson, Fiona Shaw, and Kyle MacLachlan) that doesn’t really earn its R-rating for much more than colorful language and drug use. It’s one of Apple TV’s less memorable movies, but there’s some enjoyment in watching Moore’s spiraling mother reckoning with how far she’ll go to protect her daughter. Sweeney offers good chaotic energy, and she hides the double nature of her character well, but the movie just isn’t particularly memorable. 10 Under the Silver Lake (2018) She’s not in it a great deal, but the mind-bending Under The Silver Lake has a good claim to being Sydney Sweeney’s weirdest movie. It’s probably every person involved’s weirdest movie, in fact, because David Robert Mitchell basically made a movie that feels like someone read Alice in Wonderland, took a lot of LSD, and then read Alice in Wonderland again, before trying to remake it from memory, set in a bizarro modern LA. The whole thing is a notorious fever dream of surrealism, in which Sweeney pops up as an escort briefly, during Andrew Garfield’s hero’s journey to uncover the meaning behind disappearances, murders, and an underworld culture of hidden messages. There’s no denying that it’s creatively bold, imaginative, and looks great, but somehow, none of those factors, nor the strength of the cast, mean the neo-noir thriller is actually any good. 9 Americana (2025) Somewhat tellingly, crime thriller Americana is mostly remembered for being overshadowed by Sweeney's American Eagle jeans campaign than for being a movie in its own right. A Tarantino clone with an eclectic ensemble (including Paul Walter Hauser, Halsey, Simon Rex, and Eric Dane), it made just $500k from a $9 million budget and actually deserved more than that. Sweeney plays Penny Jo Poplin, a starry-eyed small-town waitress with a stammer who aspires to move to Nashville and make it as a country singer, before finding herself drawn into an increasingly violent caper around a stolen Native American ghost shirt. The characters and story twists are consciously influenced by Tarantino’s work, and it’s not as slick as it aspires to be, but there’s fun to be had all the same, and Sweeney is very good at the heart of the zany action. 8 The Voyeurs (2021) Michael Mohan’s The Voyeurs was a self-conscious attempt to return to the heyday of 1990s erotic thrillers, with Sweeney playing opposite Justice Smith as a young couple who become obsessed with spying on their neighbors across the street. Sweeney’s descent into unhealthy fixation, and the resulting tangle of deceit and manipulation could easily have been made for Rebecca De Mornay in 1992. It’s very clear she was having a lot of fun. As the plot thickens, The Voyeurs rather loses its grip on reality, and the central fetish shifts from Sweeney watching strangers to the audience being slapped around the face with absurd melodrama. Sweeney is a good anchor to the increasingly silly content, and to her credit never talks down to it, but if you’re looking for more than sexed up soap opera drama, you won’t get it here. Luckily, it’s still a perfect guilty pleasure treat for lots of people. 7 Immaculate (2024) Directed by Michael Mohan, Immaculate is like a mean-spirited horror meets Dan Brown mutant infant, which is particularly relevant given its subject matter. Sweeney plays Sister Cecelia, a young nun who moves to a remote Italian convent, discovers she’s pregnant despite being a virgin - hence the title - and unpicks a sinister mystery that takes things from subtly unnerving chiller to full-blooded lunacy. Sweeney’s performance is probably the best thing about the horror: it asks more of her physically than most of her other roles, and she’s put through the wringer emotionally to match the ordeal. The final act is deeply unhinged, and there’s a classic nunsploitation vibe to Immaculate, but the writing does get a little sloppy, keeping it from ranking higher in Sweeney’s slate. 6 Eden (2024) Again, in Eden, Sweeney found herself brushing shoulders with a wide array of major talents, from director Ron Howard to co-stars Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, and Daniel Brühl, but the result was surprisingly poorly received. Based on the bleak true-crime story of a group of European idealists in the 1930s who flee society to set up an isolated utopian settlement on an uninhabited Galapagos island, it’s all very Lord of the Flies, as you might expect. Howard hasn’t lost anything in his eye for a great scene, and the story is great, especially as it spirals into psychological warfare and survivalist desperation. Margaret Wittmer is a more subtle role for Sweeney, and you might generally espect her to play the obnoxious femme fatale, Eloise, who was actually played by de Armas, but she’s good, all the same. It’s not exactly an uplifting movie, but there are enough dramatic turns to keep thriller fans engaged. 5 Anyone But You (2023) Grown-up - or, let’s be more honest here - raunchy rom-coms aren’t anything like as popular as they once were, as audiences have shifted away from gratuitous nudity and - gasp - actual sexual activity, but Anyone But You was part of a micro-culture revival with Jessica Lawrence’s No Hard Feelings and miraculously, there wasn’t a holy reckoning. In Anyone But You, Will Gluck weaponized the rising star power of Sweeney and Glen Powell, and their not unpleasant looks to offer an R-rated riff on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. The comedy works because of the central pair’s chemistry, and there’s enough sharp banter and unapologetic sauciness to justify the R-rating, just about. It’s not the most creatively transformative movie, but rom-coms don’t need to be in order to succeed, and there’s enough charm to paper over almost all of the cracks. 4 Big Time Adolescence (2019) ​​​​ Jason Orley’s Big Time Adolescence is a surprising blind spot for most people in Sweeney’s résumé, but it’s a great addition to the coming-of-age genre, and while her role is very much a supporting one, she plays her part. The great Hulu exclusive is sort of like a modern day riff on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, if Ferris was played by Pete Davidson, Cameron Frye was seven years younger than him, and his hedonistic temptations turned Cam into a teenage drug dealer. Davidson leans heavily on his easy SNL “bad boy” charm as Zeke, the elder friend of Griffin Gluck’s impressionable Mo, and Sweeney plays his long-suffering girlfriend who takes revenge on him. She’s warm and suitably alluring to Mo, and it’s a really charming gem of a comedy that deserves a second look.