User reviews

I picked up a copy of "Sweatshop" because it seemed like a fairly interesting slasher movie, and the DVD cover did have a certain appeal.

And now having seen the movie, I can say that it is a fairly average slasher at best. The story is straight forward, albeit a bit lacking depth and any real weight as to whom the killer and his two ghouls were and where they came from.

The story is about a group of young people, punks, emos and goths, who are at an abandoned building to set up a rave of sorts. But they are not alone there, and a deranged killer is going to turn the party into a bloody mess before the night is over.

What makes the movie bearable to sit through is the amount of violence and gore there is. The effects are nice and look realistic, which is really what is the major supporting factor that carries the movie. Plus the way that the violence and mayhem is executed is quite well, fun (in a morbid way) and inventive. There are some fairly interesting and brutal scenes to be seen throughout the movie.

As for the characters, well despite having cool costumes and outfits they turn out to be rather meaningless people that you don't really come to have any sort of relationship to as you watch the movie. It is not a matter of if they die - it is a matter of how. And the size of the hammer made from an anvil, well it just seems so ridiculous, as the guy can handle it so easily, and you can see that it is painstakingly fake as there is no weight to it as he lifts it.

For fans of macabre and violent movies, then you will surely find something enjoyable in "Sweatshop". But for fans of the horror genre, then you'll most likely find the movie to be plain and rather generic.

I really wouldn't say that Sweatshop came as a disappointment. In fact it was the complete opposite.

Overall it isn't a good film. Its a movie that has poor acting and poor characters that you hate right from the beginning, but it feels very deliberate. The best thing about Sweatshop is that the most annoying characters are killed in phenomenal ways which gives you a strong sense of satisfaction!

The last 15 minutes of the movie is where it really kicks in.

Go and see Sweatshop if you are a fan of practical gore effects, because there aren't many movies out there that demonstrate gore as well as Sweatshop does!

Like most splatter movies, "Sweatshop" features a melding of brutal violence with brutal tedium.

This one also has sexy ladies and a little bit of nudity, but unlike the violence, that is not put to much use and is mostly negligible.

This review could be used to describe basically any splatter movie. It's been the same story with every particularly violent slasher I've watched recently: from low budget affairs like "100 Tears" and "Headless" to better budgeted sleeper hits like "Laid to Rest" and "The Collector", these movies exist to show violence, and unfortunately, we still need things like plot and characters to string the violent scenes together.

If only the people who make these movies could show half as much zeal for telling a cohesive story as they do for showing intestines falling out.

The plot (not that you care) is about a few sexy Suicidal Girl types who break into a warehouse with their obnoxious male friends. Their reason for this is to start an illegal rave, so it's interesting that they are all dressed in punk style.

Anyway, the warehouse is not unoccupied, there are at least a couple of assailants hiding out there, and you can probably guess what happens next.

Interestingly (?) this one has more than just the usual one bad guy that slasher movies always hang their hat on. The bad guys in it look like something out of "Silent Hill" or "The Evil Within". There's only one bad guy who really got my attention though: a huge person wearing a welder's outfit and holding a massive sledgehammer.

The conclusion, a must-see for anyone who hates ravers, is actually something special, but will you still be paying attention by the time you get there?

Somewhere, someone said: "OK, let's find an abandoned warehouse, fill it with annoying, expendable young people, and kill them off in horrible ways! It'll be the best movie ever!" Then, 2 seconds later: "Oh yeah, and let's bring in a hillbilly and a huge guy with the world's biggest hammer (aka: a steel pole with an anvil on it)!".

SWEATSHOP explores a man, his sledge-o-matic, and the punks he pulverizes. In between homicides there's mindless chatter and rave party decoration. These in-between times make up a lot of the movie.

Gorehounds will rejoice, as the splatter quotient is quite high. The Beast (hammer man) and his female cohorts eliminate the intruders by means most grisly! Anyone looking for anything other than a slippery bloodbath could be very disappointed...

What we have here is a cheap horror movie with terrible dialogue who's only saving grace is its bad guys and quite impressive gore scenes.

The movie starts with a naked goth chick being killed. Then for 20 minutes you just watch the rest of the non acting cast spout the terrible, unfunny dialogue and dance. I'm not even joking there is a 5 minute scene of three of these idiots just dancing. The set up of this movie is a little dated. I don't know if it is supposed to be set in the late 90's but judging by all the cheesy goth attire and the fact they're going to a secret rave it should be.

When we finally get to the meat of the film what we actually get is a lot of meat. The gore scenes in this movie are actually very impressive and if like me you were just constantly annoyed by the pathetic characters, you'll enjoy seeing them smashed by a giant hammer in ever more inventive ways. The main bad guy 'The Beast' is also a pretty imposing figure. Both the gore and 'The Beast' are what made me score this movie any points.

I wouldn't seek this movie out. Just wait until it's on the horror channel and watch for free, you'll enjoy it more that way.

SWEATSHOP is your usual brain-dead slasher flick in which a bunch of horrible characters are bumped off by even more horrible villains. Despite some impressive-looking bad guys, wearing welding masks and the like, this is an absolutely pitiful movie that has nothing going for it aside from the incessant gore.

The acting is laughable, the script equally so, and the dingy warehouse look is so done to death that I wonder why they bothered. There appears to be no technical proficiency in terms of film-making whatsoever. Instead, SWEATSHOP merely cuts a swathe through its irritating cast members, showing them getting their heads smashed in and faces pulled off.

The gore goes on forever and forever and is quite nasty, but when there's nothing else about the film to enjoy whatsoever then it quickly becomes tiresome. In the end, SWEATSHOP is your usual bottom-of-the-barrel crud, with zero redeeming qualities.

OK, I will sum up the movie. The main charters are flat, no personality except there is no reason to care so when they die, well you don't have to worry about another scene with them. At one point I asked myself, hadn't this guy already been killed? No he hadn't the main charters just weren't worth paying attention too. I LOVE "B" horror, but this is the first movie I have seen that you "just don't care" when someone dies. You don't even not like them and wish they would die.

If you are a "B" horror fan such as myself, why sit through it at all? Well let me tell you, the villains are VERY VERY good. You have no idea where they came from, why they are doing what they do and they still pull it off. There a huge fat guy wearing a welders mask welding a huge pipe with a blacksmith anvil at the end. Along with a group of female minions that are a cross between the girl from "The Ring" and a Harpy.

This bad guy and bad girls need to be reused in a well written movie. Like I said what a waste of great villains.

Just because this is a low budget movie aimed at "gorehounds" does not excuse the fact that it's still...well, bad. The acting is typical amateur level and the script simply consists of failed attempts at drama, which usually means one character talking about how another is a "b****" or how they don't "give a f****" or how this is some "bull****". Pointless.

But what about the kills?

They are inventive, to be sure. But who cares when the actors' reaction to the pain inflicted upon them is to scream expletives even louder? Did you just sustain a life threatening injury or did someone scratch your car, dude? Even the attempts at self-aware nudge-nudge humour fail. They're just juvenile.

The reason I gave it a 2 is 'cause the best and only tolerable part about this is all the average-to-slightly-cute white girls flashing plenty of B-cups and the fairly sexy goth outfits and goth dancing.

Sweatshop starts off with a young naked woman trying to escape an unknown killer in an industrial building, only for a cop to come in and accidentally blast her death. Quite an opening! The rest of the plot sees a group of punks/Goths stage a rave in the same building, but killers lurk inside. I bought this on DVD for £1 and it was quite a bargain, I remember thinking Wow after my first viewing. Fast forward several years and I have just watched it for a second time, sadly I felt a lot less impressed. This is a B-movie so it goes without saying that the acting is not going to be of a high level, and it's not. Generally speaking it is reasonable but there a few of those awkward silences between characters, etc. If, like me, you find Goth chicks attractive then you get your monies worth here. There are several scenes of sex and nudity, on the flip side much of the dialogue consists of sex talk (in particular oral sex), this does become a bit tedious. After the initial death the movie does drag for the next 20 minutes or so, it is one of those slasher movies that progressively gets more violent as it goes on but may test the patience of some viewers. The killer is a hulking man who wears a welding masks and is called The Beast, however he also has a pair of female accomplices who look like nightmarish vampires. This is never explained and to be honest I would have preferred to have just had The Beast alone, thus avoiding slightly confusing thoughts (are these women of supernatural origin, etc?). Negatives aside what Sweatshop does is provide much splatter. Beast wields a huge foundry hammer and uses it to literally smash some of his victims to pieces. He also indulges in some torture porn too, one victim has her fingers cut off one by one. Given the low budget the graphic special effects are impressive, if you don't like nasty gore movies then this most certainly is not for you! The closing credits are cool, each cast member is shown with three photos, the third ones being of their corpses (or what's left of them!). For splatter fans only.

In the intro, some naked girl finds herself in some abandoned plant. A cop arrives. But there's someone else at the plant. Both of them don't end up well.

Then a dreadful bunch of goth punks arrive to organize a party with lights and a dj at that same plant for some reason. The dialogue that ensues among all these people is mostly sex-related talk. Soon enough they meet two female ghouls with creepy teeth...and then the killer--some big welder dude who carries an anvil on handle with him. And then the killings start. Somehow the party still materializes, and then the killer crashes it.

You kinda want Sweatshop to be a nice horror B-movie. Unfortunately, it's not. It's a struggling C-movie. What this movie has to do with a sweatshop, no one knows. Colored lights are annoying, the darkness is annoying, the characters are mostly lame, the voice recording and synchronization are off most of the time, the music is terrible. A party with electronic dance music is one thing. Another is some electronic industrial noise thing that no one makes let alone listens to. I take that back since apparently the songs here are from bands that do that kind of stuff. But, man, it's just not enjoyable. The sound effect are also dreadful, mostly the same 80s inspired synthesizer sound. This movie is proof that multitasking just doesn't work. The director is involved in every aspect of the movie--not a good idea.

But that's the bad stuff. On the good side, we have the likable Peyton Wetzel and the hot Julin in the most enjoyable performances. These two are trying their best here. Then there's the fantastic gore, violence, and original death scenes. They're really good. The villain is also exceptional and has potential to turn this into a franchise. Overall, despite plenty of annoyances, the horror aspects nearly save this movie and the lovely Julin is a treat to see. I'm being more generous than necessary but the violence and gore make this movie worth a look.

I have seen a lot of movies in my life. Sometimes the movies were bad. But this movie is one of the worst movies I ever saw in my whole life.

I borrowed the movie and I was looking forward for thrill. What I got was a complete disappointment. The dialogs are extremely bad and lowest level. It all comes down to sex and alcohol. The actors were extremely low-level without any good acting performance. The movie location looks very low priced. If you watch the cut version you will get almost nothing to see. In cut version you have to resign nearly 10 minutes.

The best thing of the movie was the makeup of the both hammer guy girlfriends from my opinion.

This movie broadcasts pure boredom. If you really don't like someone you have to present this guy with this movie for birthday.

Seriously, if you want high art this movie is not for you. If you want a movie that sets you up to root for the cast to get killed in fantastic ways, then you need to watch this film.

I'll be honest, I almost turned it off at the 25 minute mark. VERY bad acting, and a setting (a rave. Really?) that I didn't care about, but once the killer enters the fray it's incredibly creative.

The gore is off the charts and worth a watch to any true horror fan. I watch EVERY bad horror flick in hopes of finding gems that stand out. You'd be surprised at how many low budget horror movies don't have any effects in them these days.

I can handle a bad movie. That's what cult cinema is all about. But I can't handle a BORING movie. This movie, once past the 25 minute mark, is definitely not boring. It's blood-soaked and it's beautiful.

Okay, I can sum this up in just a single sentence: lack luster over acted gore film about a maniac who beats people with a magic troll hammer. Didn't we see the hammer on Buffy the vampire slayer already? I admit I am not as much into the titty slasher masked killer genre as I am zombie flicks. But this looked interesting so I gave it a shot. Luckily I bought a cheap used copy and didn't pay full price for this movie.

There has been a lot of really crappy low budget movies coming out since the digital cameras became available for just anyone to get and declare themselves a movie maker. But for real fans of horror it's going to take more than some fake blood and tits to entertain. The acting was pretty lame. Visually there were some impressive visuals, I will give it that, but it really could have been better. I was hoping for so much more. Too much really lame and irritating dialogue, and not enough terror action.

I think I will just stick to zombie flicks from now on.

It's not particularly suspenseful. It is woefully written. You don't even slightly care if the characters live to fight another day and several of them you are quite pleased to see die. The monster is reasonably scary but wasted in such a poor effort writing/acting wise. If gore is your thing this might be for you but if you like being scared by a clever horror film it's most definitely not.

When I saw Sweatshop while scrolling through a service app called Tubi, I was curious. Is this going to be horrible or a great slasher with good practical effects? Answer is, I got both. This movie is horrible. The actors, story, camera shots, all bad. The violence and gore is solid though. This immediately gets at least a 5 because I know there was a hard working team behind the makeup that wants to actually give us practical effects as opposed to crappy CGI. If you're a horror fan like me that enjoys slashers where you just want to see a bunch of stupid people get sliced up, this is for you. Otherwise, ignore this.

OK, I can sum this up real fast. Run of the mill low budget slasher movies with suicide girls. HOWEVER, it has one awesome thing going for it. A HUGE HAMMER. Yes folks, the big killer smashes people to bits with a huge, and I do mean HUGE, hammer. Did I mention it was a huge hammer? I give it a solid 7 just for the way they handled all of the gore. Plot wise, ehhh, so-so. So lets see, mediocre plot, awesome death scenes and very nice eye candy (if you like suicide girls, I do). It's better than a lot of the other low budget crap out there. If you are bored, give it a shot. It will keep you entertained for an hour and a half. Oh, and you really want the killer to kill everyone, they are all rather irritating characters. Anyways, it's worth watching just for the death scenes.

Viewed at the Festival de Film, Cannes 2011

Sweatshop is a dark, mean and nasty, grungy delight! A group of highly disposable young people decide to throw an illegal rave in a semi-abandoned warehouse; semi-abandoned because, unknown to them, its sole resident, a giant of a man with the world's largest hammer (basically an anvil at the end of a long pole), is still very much at home and determined to keep the noise down! And that's all there is to it!

Filmed over a couple of years, as and when, mostly at the weekend when people had time to work on it, Sweatshop is way, way better than you might think. There is a (sort of) backstory, which is more hinted at than explained, but it's also unnecessary since the film's director and writers, Ted Geoghegan and Stacy Davidson (who also directs) know what material they have and what their audience wants.

This means the audience can sit back, relax and watch people being smashed to bloody pulp! Can life get any better than this?

First off this film isn't for everyone,if your looking for a actual plot or deep characters than this movie isn't it.But thats what makes it even more awesome!the basic plot is about a group of teenage ravers getting stalked and killed by a masked killer while trying to set up a rave.If you like 70's and 80's slasher flicks this film is perfect for you,its almost like someone found a lost slasher from the early 70's and its just know getting released.this film has everything you could ask for in a slasher film.over the top gory kills,tons of nudity and plenty of drug use.this film is destined for cult status in a few years and i feel sorry for any fan of slasher films who miss it.also their is not a single scene of crappy cgi everyone of the kills is completely practical and looks super gory and graphic,especially the ending!