Texas Frightmare Weekend is the best place I could ever imagine to be able to screen some of the best work on display from the young, hard-charging up-and-comers in the the thriving field of independent horror. Last year, I was wowed in equal parts by Robert Hall's impressive hard-core gorefest, LAID TO REST, and the epic struggle of Good Vs. Evil (or Evil Vs. REALLY Evil) in Stacy Davidson's microbudget epic thriller, DOMAIN OF THE DAMNED, which looked, sounded and played better than 2/3rds of the bigger budget Hollywood-made pieces of crap that had the audacity to classify themselves as "horror films".
The mark of a great filmmaker is seeing how they raise the bar for themselves with the efforts that follow their previous work. Looking forward to the future offerings of both Hall and Davidson, I was pleased to see that Mr. D. was first out of the gate this year with his sophomore feature, SWEATSHOP. I am happy to report to fans of true, out-and-out, balls- to-the-wall mayhem, that the director of DOMAIN has delivered in spades, giving us everything we'd hoped for and nothing we expected.
The movie bucks the trend right out of the gate when it establishes its premise. As enjoyable as a great part of the series is, the Friday THE 13TH franchise does defy logic in more ways than one (how many groups of kids would have to be butchered at Camp Crystal Lake, before the authorities simply closed it and razed the place to the ground?), asking audiences to suspend their disbelief roughly the height of Mount Everest.
SWEATSHOP, though it hardly tries to reinvent the wheel in this respect, does NOT suffer from this problem. The scenario is still kept pretty simple: a rave promoter and her friends, all involved in that lifestyle, do what ravers do best: find an old abandoned warehouse, break in and set up a party in order to score some quick and easy cash and party down at the same time.
Their mistake? Not asking permission of the previous tenant. Who never left. Who isn't happy with their intrusion, and who walks not so softly, and carries the biggest freakin' stick you have ever seen in life. And actually, it's not a stick. It's a pipe...with an anvil attached to the end. No, that is not a typo, either.
When you witness what this character, known only as The Beast (Jeremy Sumrall) does with this brutally improvised implement, you will never think of the phrase "getting hammered" in quite the same way again. In the same F13 tradition that was well-established as that series progressed, there are few likable characters to root for here, and the ones that do have your empathy or sympathies? Don't get too attached to them.
Having said that, plenty of time is still taken to establish the dysfunctional dynamic between the friends, including Charlie, the organizer (Ashley Kay), DJ Enyx (Naika Malveaux), slovenly equipment handler Wade (Brent Himes, making Larry The Cable Guy look as cultured as Basil Rathbone by comparison) and his put-upon assistant, Kenny (Vincent Guerrero), amongst others. All of which makes little difference as it turns out, once The Beast begins to decimate the group in a fashion not seen since grindhouse ruled the drive-ins and the dilapidated urban movie palaces back in the Seventies.
Which brings us to the most impressive thing about SWEATSHOP: the technical aspects. Lighting, camera-work, sound design...everything is on point here, and it makes you wonder how in the hell Davidson and crew managed to pull it off, and make this look as good - or better than - a watered-down, PG-13 piece of dreck from a major studio. And that goes double for the FX work. Though the death sequences are far from pleasant, this is a whole different animal than the 'gore-ture porn' offered by series like SAW and HOSTEL. Kristi Boul, Marcus Koch and Mike Oliver are not beneath giving The Beast multiple and cruelly creative ways of dispatching his victims, but the monster seems to be as much about his business as he is about dealing out unimaginable suffering. He wants to teach these interlopers a lesson they'll never forget, and does so with a vengeance that YOU'LL never forget.
And then there's that ending. If you're the kind of horror fan who loves to rewind the prom scene in CARRIE and watch it several times, you cannot miss SWEATSHOP'S hell-bent-for-leather conclusion.
When it comes to a well-done indie horror entry served up straight, no chaser, Stacy Davidson and company have delivered, firing on all cylinders with this one. So strap in and prepare for a bloody, terrifying ride.
And don't forget to thank them for putting the "hard-R" back into "hoRRoR" again.
The mark of a great filmmaker is seeing how they raise the bar for themselves with the efforts that follow their previous work. Looking forward to the future offerings of both Hall and Davidson, I was pleased to see that Mr. D. was first out of the gate this year with his sophomore feature, SWEATSHOP. I am happy to report to fans of true, out-and-out, balls- to-the-wall mayhem, that the director of DOMAIN has delivered in spades, giving us everything we'd hoped for and nothing we expected.
The movie bucks the trend right out of the gate when it establishes its premise. As enjoyable as a great part of the series is, the Friday THE 13TH franchise does defy logic in more ways than one (how many groups of kids would have to be butchered at Camp Crystal Lake, before the authorities simply closed it and razed the place to the ground?), asking audiences to suspend their disbelief roughly the height of Mount Everest.
SWEATSHOP, though it hardly tries to reinvent the wheel in this respect, does NOT suffer from this problem. The scenario is still kept pretty simple: a rave promoter and her friends, all involved in that lifestyle, do what ravers do best: find an old abandoned warehouse, break in and set up a party in order to score some quick and easy cash and party down at the same time.
Their mistake? Not asking permission of the previous tenant. Who never left. Who isn't happy with their intrusion, and who walks not so softly, and carries the biggest freakin' stick you have ever seen in life. And actually, it's not a stick. It's a pipe...with an anvil attached to the end. No, that is not a typo, either.
When you witness what this character, known only as The Beast (Jeremy Sumrall) does with this brutally improvised implement, you will never think of the phrase "getting hammered" in quite the same way again. In the same F13 tradition that was well-established as that series progressed, there are few likable characters to root for here, and the ones that do have your empathy or sympathies? Don't get too attached to them.
Having said that, plenty of time is still taken to establish the dysfunctional dynamic between the friends, including Charlie, the organizer (Ashley Kay), DJ Enyx (Naika Malveaux), slovenly equipment handler Wade (Brent Himes, making Larry The Cable Guy look as cultured as Basil Rathbone by comparison) and his put-upon assistant, Kenny (Vincent Guerrero), amongst others. All of which makes little difference as it turns out, once The Beast begins to decimate the group in a fashion not seen since grindhouse ruled the drive-ins and the dilapidated urban movie palaces back in the Seventies.
Which brings us to the most impressive thing about SWEATSHOP: the technical aspects. Lighting, camera-work, sound design...everything is on point here, and it makes you wonder how in the hell Davidson and crew managed to pull it off, and make this look as good - or better than - a watered-down, PG-13 piece of dreck from a major studio. And that goes double for the FX work. Though the death sequences are far from pleasant, this is a whole different animal than the 'gore-ture porn' offered by series like SAW and HOSTEL. Kristi Boul, Marcus Koch and Mike Oliver are not beneath giving The Beast multiple and cruelly creative ways of dispatching his victims, but the monster seems to be as much about his business as he is about dealing out unimaginable suffering. He wants to teach these interlopers a lesson they'll never forget, and does so with a vengeance that YOU'LL never forget.
And then there's that ending. If you're the kind of horror fan who loves to rewind the prom scene in CARRIE and watch it several times, you cannot miss SWEATSHOP'S hell-bent-for-leather conclusion.
When it comes to a well-done indie horror entry served up straight, no chaser, Stacy Davidson and company have delivered, firing on all cylinders with this one. So strap in and prepare for a bloody, terrifying ride.
And don't forget to thank them for putting the "hard-R" back into "hoRRoR" again.