Sweatshop

2009
Dir. Stacy Davidson

Charlie has a reputation as the promoter of the hippest and edgiest Dark Wave parties around. In an enormous vacant warehouse situated on the edge of the city, she and her friends gather to set up an explosive rave without attracting unwanted attention. But someone, or something, is already watching… Unknown to the fun-seeking ravers, an inhuman beast resides within the confines of the warehouse armed with a mammoth weapon that serves only one purpose: to end the lives of those who trespass within its lair. Charlie had hoped this party would be the best she’d ever thrown – now it looks like it may be her last!

Another month, another straight to DVD ‘torture-porn’ flick featuring the blood of thinly-drawn characters being sloshed across our screen. Sweatshop is by far one of the most rudimentarily scripted of the bunch. It also boasts some of the most unsympathetic characters in recent memory, but it somehow manages to set itself slightly apart from the pack with a number of interesting twists; notably the gruelling effects, monstrously hulking killer and throbbing electronic score courtesy of Dwayne Cathey. While it also features a number of nicely staged death scenes – even managing to work some suspense into the mix – Sweatshop still suffers from uneven pacing and takes too long to get going. Director Davidson substitutes slow-burning tension for endless scenes in which annoying characters - who all resemble extras from a gritty cyber-punk movie - argue with each other, fuck each other, and then argue with each other again. The film at times resembles an overly long music video, with loads of scenes of the aforementioned characters dancing around in slow-motion under copious amounts of dry-ice. It’s only whenever the frequency of the murders increases that we get any semblance of momentum or suspense.


One of the film’s merits is without a doubt the jaw-dropping spectacle of the killer. A downright formidable figure, he is decked out in animal furs and a welding mask, and sports a hammer to make even Thor a little intimidated. He is an unusual and grotesque figure and adds a real edge to the film. He has a couple of demonic looking minions too and their look appears to have been heavily influenced by Lamberto Bava’s Demons; all bulging eyes, contorted movements and toothy snarls. Indeed the influence of Italian horror is evident throughout Sweatshop; in the stylised lighting and colour palette, extreme-violence, highly moody location and somewhat convoluted screenplay.

The violence in the film is beyond brutal: skulls are crushed, limbs are bound in barbed-wire, jaws are ripped off, bodies are crunched to bloody pulps and throats are slit wide open. The thinly-drawn characters and epilepsy-inducing editing lessens the impact somewhat. Once we’ve finally limped to the finale, the sight of the hulking killer dispatching various ravers on the crowded dance floor should further satisfy gore hounds and echoes similar scenes of carnage on the dancefloor in Blade, Beyond the Rave and Freddy vs Jason.


Sweatshop is a standard techno-goth themed horror flick with outlandish violence, a weird, behemothic serial killer and a genuinely Carpenter-esque score that perfectly evokes memories of grimy grindhouse flicks of yesteryear.

Sweatshop (cert. 18) is released on DVD (£9.99) by High Fliers Films on 9th May 2011.

Popular posts from this blog

Whistle and I’ll Come to You (2010)

Image
Dir. Andy de Emmony After placing his senile wife in a care home, retired astronomer James Parkin (John Hurt) heads for the coast to revisit their ‘old haunts’, including the now out-of-season hotel they honeymooned in. By day he is stalked along the windswept beaches by a spectral figure dressed in white, and by night he is terrorised by strange sounds and someone, or something, attempting to enter his room… In the 2000s BBC4 attempted to reignite the old Ghost Story at Christmas tradition by adapting MR James’s A View from a Hill (2005) and Number 13 (2006). This series was seemingly short lived though, as their next outing wasn’t until 2010, and an unusual reinterpretation of James’s classic chiller Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad . While de Emmony’s direction captures the atmosphere and tone of James very well, this film differs significantly from other adaptations, including Jonathan Miller’s supremely unsettling 1968 take . Neil Cross’s screenplay only incorpo...
Read more

Caveat (2020)

Image
Isaac, a brooding drifter suffering from memory loss, agrees to look after Olga, the niece of his acquaintance Moe. A troubled woman prone to bouts of catatonia, Olga lives in an old, ramshackle house on an isolated island in the middle of a dark lake. Isaac agrees to wear a chained harness that prevents him from going into certain rooms. He gradually comes to learn of the unsettling history of the house and the unquiet dead it harbours within its walls... Written and directed by Damian McCarthy,  Caveat  is steeped in the Gothic tradition. With distinct echoes of the work of Edgar Allan Poe, it is ripe with a lingering atmosphere of morbidity and decay. McCarthy's screenplay toys with themes such as psychological rot, dark family secrets, and the aftermath of unspeakable violence and cruelty. The story unfolds within the creepy confines of the lonely, mouldy house, with myriad forbidden rooms, hidden passageways and concealed bloody secrets. The house itself is cut off from c...
Read more

Shankill Graveyard

Image
While staying with my parents recently in my home town of Lurgan, County Armagh, I naturally decided to pay a visit to a few of the local graveyards. Top of my list was Shankill Graveyard. Located just outside the town centre, and surrounded by a residential area, the site upon which Shankill cemetery stands was a place of worship in earlier centuries. Shankill Parish church was originally situated here before it was eventually moved to the town centre. The outline of a double ring fort is still noticeable. Amongst those at rest in the cemetery are the Brownlow family, who established the town in 1610 when they were given land beside Lough Neagh by the British government during the Plantation. They eventually contributed to the development of the linen industry the town became famous for throughout the seventeenth century. Their family vault is situated in the centre of the cemetery where the old church once stood. Apparently well off English families such as the Brownlow’s, sough...
Read more