Sweatshop

Another indie-genre movie from Cannes gets looked over by Justin Richards.

Director: Stacy Davidson
Screenplay: Stacy Davidson & Ted Geoghegan
Producer: Laura Bryant & Ted Geoghegan
Starring: Ashley Kay, Peyton Wetzel, Brent Himes, Melanie Donihoo, Naika Malveaux, Julin, Krystal Freeman
Year: 2009
Country: USA

Stacy Davidson’s second film as a director (after Domain of the Damned) is a film of two halves. The first half sets the scene in a rather dull and predictable way, with an assortment of young adults breaking into an abandoned warehouse to set up for an impromptu party. However, unknown to them, but known to us the audience, they’ve chosen the wrong building. A huge hulking killer wearing a fleece coat of sorts and a welder’s mask, accompanied by a couple of demonic looking followers, live in the warehouse and they aren’t a very hospitable lot!

The second half sees the giant and his nasty mates setting about taking out the would-be party organisers and, in the over-the–top finale, taking out most of the party revellers too, and I don’t mean for a nice meal and bottle of bubbly!

What lets Sweatshop down is the poor lighting and over reliance on shaky cam shots and overly kinetic editing. I’m afraid for most shots it doesn’t work and just causes something akin to seasickness in the viewer.

While the acting is poor to average, at least the majority of the murder scenes are fairly well handled and, let’s face it, that’s what horror fans want to see. In fact there are some bits in this film that made me sit up and think – they didn’t just do that, did they – so I guess it scores some brownie points there. The main villain’s murder weapon of choice appears to be an anvil attached to an iron pole, which he swings around and crushes his victims in a spectacular manner; that is of course when you can see what’s going on!

I’m guessing Sweatshop will see a DVD release over here at some time, but I won’t be in the queue to buy a copy.

Review by Justin Richards