SWEATSHOP
DVD region 2. High Fliers Films.

Directed, co-written, co-produced, visual effect supervised, sound designed, location scouted and presumably enjoyed by Stacy Davidson, Sweatshop is a film you want to like – a full-on splatter shocker with a cyber goth theme and an amusing looking killer o the front cover. And it’s had some positive reviews, a fact that may or may not be related to the number of genre critics and magazines / websites name-checked in the closing credits. But in reality, this is fairly generic stuff, with a few plus points that don’t quite cancel out the minuses.

Goth club promoter Charlie (Ashley Kay, trying hard with attitude but struggling with dialogue delivery) and her crew of not-entirely convincing misfit punks, Goths and rednecks break into a warehouse to set up the sort of rave that only American filmmakers seem to think actually happens (seriously – unless the party has a theme of 'fetish chicks and chav dudes', I’m just not buying this, and I’ve been to enough of these events to actually know what I’m talking about here). After getting drunk, making out and bickering over things that no one watching will give a damn about for thirty long minutes, they start getting snuffed out one by one by a couple of women from Demons (knowingly referential nods presumably trumping any charges of plagiarism) and a large Jason / Leatherface type in a welding mask who has the most hilarious weapon I’ve ever seen – an anvil attached to a steel pole. There’s no explanation as to who these people are (the psycho killer is fair enough, but the demons? What the fuck?) but it’s fair to say they hate cyber goths, and in a series of extraordinarily gory scenes, the cast is rapidly whittled down. Eventually, the mad killer (Weldface?) goes apeshit during the rave itself (an even that has apparently spontaneously occurred, as there was no one from the organisers left to open the doors, sell tickets, play the music or work the lights) and brutalises his way through a bunch of extras.

If you love gore, you’ll certainly be impressed by the killings her, which combine the torture elements of Hostel with some of the most spectacular scenes of splatter that I’ve seen in some time – heads are ripped open, sliced into and flattened; limbs and genitals sliced off (and used as ball-gags!); bodies disintegrated and entrails spilled – the lesson being that you really don’t want to be hit with an anvil. To give the fil credit, these effects are very good - better than a lot I've seen in much bigger budget films.

However, none of this comes quickly enough, and we have to spend way too much time watching the antics of the characters, who manage to be both one dimensional and annoying as hell, a fact not helped by the rather limited acting skills on display. Much of the film is bathed in that annoying green light that too many low budget filmmakers think gives their movie atmosphere and class (in reality it does neither), and while the clichéd structural approach might well be a deliberate throwback to Eighties slasher horror, there’s a reason why that decade is so widely dismissed by most serious genre fans who weren't teenagers at the time – those films sucked even then.

More patient gorehounds might enjoy this. But I’ve seen the same thing done too much, and much better..

DAVID FLINT

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