Sydney Sweeney's 2025 Crime Thriller Flop With Halsey Is Worth Watching On Hulu

So, it turns out Sydney Sweeney made a crime thriller with Halsey. You might not have heard of "Americana," but Hulu subscribers certainly seem to be enjoying it. Unfortunately, Sweeney's film was completely ignored at the box office last year after gathering dust for two years following its world premiere at the 2023 South by Southwest Film & TV Festival (SXSW). Still, that doesn't mean it's not worth a watch.

"Americana" marks the feature directorial debut of Tony Tost, who previously created USA Network's "Damnation" (a short-lived Western series that could have been better than certain "Yellowstone" spin-offs). The film sees Tost returning to the Western genre, this time in a modern-day setting. Sweeney stars as Penny Jo Poplin, a shy but ambitious waitress who forms a partnership with veteran Lefty Ledbetter (a typically charming Paul Walter Hauser) to try to attain a Lakota ghost shirt worth $1 million dollars. The only problem is, the criminal Dillon MacIntosh (Eric Dane) is also after the artifact for the Western antiquities dealer Roy Lee Dean (Simon Rex). Meanwhile, Halsey plays Dillon's long suffering girlfriend Mandy Starr ,who goes on the run after attacking Dillon in her home.

As mentioned, "Americana" debuted at SXSW 2023 before Lionsgate gave it a theatrical release in August 2025. That means "Americana" opened on the heels of Sweeney's American Eagle controversy and at a time when the momentum she'd built from 2023's "Anyone but You" seemed to be wearing off somewhat — although she ultimately managed to build some of it back up with Paul Feig's enjoyably wicked drama "The Housemaid" later that same year. In all, then, "Americana" very much fell between the cracks. Nevertheless, it actually earned a solid critical response and is well worth seeking out on Hulu.

"Americana" is far from Sydney Sweeney's worst movie, as evidenced by its perfectly respectable 62% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. Kyle Logan of the Chicago Reader was oddly prescient when he wrote, "'Americana' delivers as an enjoyable neo-Western with some things to say and requisite genre thrills, but it's unlikely to be remembered." Elsewhere, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle thought Paul Walter Hauser and Sweeney did a solid job of preventing the movie from "derailing" while Variety's Peter Debruge praised Tony Tost for delivering a feature debut that arrived "more polished than most filmmakers' third or fourth." Not bad, then, and certainly a decent enough critical response to elicit some sort of recognition from audiences.

Alas, that recognition wasn't initially forthcoming. In August 2025, Lionsgate put "Americana" in just over 1,000 theaters, and The Hollywood Reporter declared it a "bomb" after it opened in theaters to an estimated $500,000 on a reported $9 million budget. But as Deadline pointed out at the time, the movie was still "expected to be profitable for Lionsgate" under the studio's Lionsgate Premiere Releasing label. That said, as /Film's Ryan Scott put it, the film certainly seemed to be "pretty much dead on arrival" following its box office debut, leaving just VOD and streaming as a potential way for it to earn a profit.

The streaming side certainly seems to be panning out. "Americana" hit Hulu on June 26, 2026, and it was at number five on the streamer's most-watched films chart as of June 29, 2026 (per FlixPatrol). Clearly, there's enough here to entice the Hulu crowd. So, if, like everyone else, you happened to miss "Americana" in theaters, now is the time to check out this overlooked neo-Western.