‘American Sweatshop’ Review: Lili Reinhart Anchors an Uneven but Disturbing Digital-Age Thriller

Straddling character study and thriller, social-issue drama and something closer to a traditional noir, American Sweatshop takes on the psychological toll of online violence. Starring Lili Reinhart (Riverdale) as a young woman increasingly unsettled and consumed by a disturbing video she encounters on social media, this feature debut from German filmmaker Uta Briesewitz—an experienced cinematographer and TV director—dives into the darker corners of digital culture. At times it’s psychologically astute; at others, it slips into something far more superficial.

Daisy (Reinhart) has a punishing job: she moderates user-flagged images and videos for an online platform. Working in an office that resembles a call center, she and a group of young colleagues sift through clip after clip, trying to decide whether they violate the company’s vaguely defined rules. Most of it is routine, but certain videos linger—unsettling them, haunting their sleep, seeping into their lives. There’s a therapist on-site and a break room to decompress, but fainting spells and outbursts are common. For Daisy, who’s studying to become a nurse and leads the kind of active personal life typical of someone her age, the material she’s exposed to begins to bleed into her everyday existence.

Things take a darker turn when she comes across a video—one we never fully see, for obvious reasons—that leaves her paralyzed. It appears to depict a violent sexual act followed by something even more disturbing involving nails. Is it real, or staged for the camera? Daisy collapses on the spot, and when neither her supervisors nor the local police show much interest (both effectively washing their hands of it), she decides to investigate on her own.

At that point, American Sweatshop loses some of its focus, slipping into the conventions of an investigative thriller led by a protagonist who rather clumsily and implausibly puts herself in danger. She ventures first into the dark web and then into real-world situations, all in an attempt to uncover the truth. Yet what remains most compelling isn’t the procedural thread but the way Daisy’s fixation on that violent act gradually erodes her sense of self, making her more aggressive, vengeful, and emotionally detached. The film suggests, with unnerving clarity, that prolonged exposure to this kind of content can corrode anyone’s mental stability.

That’s the film’s most disturbing dimension. Shot in Germany but set in the United States, it carries a distinctly European sensibility that pulls the narrative in two directions: toward a more conventional crime story—where a fully Hollywood version would likely place all its bets—and toward something closer to an indie festival drama. American Sweatshop tries to be both, and at times risks being neither. Thanks largely to Reinhart’s strong performance (she was recently seen in Hal & Harper), the film is at its most engaging when it focuses on the psychological and personal fallout of Daisy’s work—and that of her colleagues—rather than on her amateur sleuthing.

For all its flaws, the film taps into a raw nerve. Briesewitz weaves its more analytical edge through parallel threads: a young girl Daisy looks after who stumbles onto content she shouldn’t see, coworkers who spiral into violent episodes, drinking, and heavy medication as a way to numb themselves against what they’re forced to watch. The idea that online violence affects everyone—even outside the extreme cases depicted here—is explored with clinical precision in Matthew Nemeth’s script. But whenever the film leans, somewhat uncertainly, into thriller territory, it starts to resemble just another crime story.