SXSW Review: ‘American Sweatshop’ is a Riveting Character Study about Human Nature with a Magnetic Lili Reinhart

There’s a lot of content out there on the Internet, and much of it is far too easy to find even for those who aren’t expressly looking. It makes sense that there would need to be a system for reporting, evaluating, and moderating content, and that such a system would need to take various factors into account in order to keep dangerous or problematic things from being seen without filtering out legitimate and safe concepts for the wrong reasons. American Sweatshop spotlights a processing center for that very purpose, exploring the detrimental psychological effects of skimming through so much potentially objectionable material.

Daisy (Lili Reinhart) shows up every day to clock in to her alternately dull and disturbing job, sitting at a computer clicking “accept” or “reject” before moving on to the next video. Her colleague Bob (Joel Fry) is at his wit’s end, acting out and using humor to get by while also managing an office pool to guess which new hire will crack first. Daisy’s monotonous existence is shaken when she sees a video featuring an extreme act of violence – and a woman’s blood-curdling scream – and is dismayed to learn that it may simply constitute pornography, resulting in a removal but no further action. She soon becomes obsessed with identifying the man seen watching the horror unfold in the background of this video, and sets out to find him and exact some kind of justice.

This film comes from veteran TV director Uta Briesewitz and screenwriter Matthew Nemeth, modeled on a real job that does exist, with fictionalized characters and an invented central haunting video. The intention not to traumatize audiences, displaying upsetting video titles without recreating all their awful contents, is meant to spark whatever imagination needed to realize the terrible nature of some of what these people see on a daily basis. That it’s then further reviewed and might be reclassified – mostly for fear of the company being sued for taking down something they shouldn’t have – adds considerable moral quandaries, since it’s never entirely possible to know if a violent act was staged or has actually been perpetrated for the twisted delight of anonymous online consumers. 

There are fascinating conversations that unfold throughout this film, which does contain moments of levity, stemming mostly from the way Daisy and Bob cope and interact with those around them, but it has a truly dark underbelly. When one prospective suitor at a bar asks Daisy how she’s not turned on by them talking about porn (more accurately, her merely describing her work), it’s a moment of a clear lack of understanding or consideration. It’s the extreme equivalent of how those who work at ice cream shops don’t eat ice cream every day, but so much worse, since there’s really no pleasure to be found in screening what others have already flagged as objectionable. Sadly, there’s no shortage of footage, and Daisy and Bob are just two of the many workers in this dead-end job with closely-monitored breaks, quotas, and a counselor who is supposed to be there to offer moral support but is truly terrible at his job.

This premise and surrounding narrative is compelling enough in its own right, but it really comes alive thanks to a magnetic lead performance from Reinhart, seen recently on the festival circuit at Sundance opposite Cooper Raiff in the TV series Hal & Harper. She’s unapologetically brash and impulsive in this role, and it’s impossible to look away as she makes concerning life decisions but also sometimes acts as the most human, well-meaning person in this film’s broken world. Fry is entertaining but doesn’t let his performance get too comical to be distracting or unbelievable, and Christiane Paul adds depth to the center’s seemingly unfeeling manager who has her own even less invested supervisors who demand totalitarian accountability from her. This film is unnerving and riveting, and chooses a particularly formidable way to close out its story, leaving audiences with worthwhile questions about right and wrong that will have them thinking about this film long after its credits roll.

Movie Rating: 8/10