The Sadness, the feature debut from director Rob Jabbaz that is getting a release on Shudder this Thursday, is unlike any other zombie film you’ve seen. This is both a blessing and a curse as it frequently pushes its violence far beyond what any such film has before it while also falling into repetitive cycles of depravity. From the very first kill where a person’s head is doused in burning oil and their skin is ripped from their face as they scream in agony, it becomes clear that this is a film that is all about the spectacle of its own brutality.
It takes any conceptions you may have about it, throws them on the ground, and smashes it all into a bloody pulp. It does so with a perverse joy that sets out to upset, dragging you through the wringer of increasingly gory sequences that never let up. It is one of the most extreme and unsettling cinematic experiences that upends any existing genre rules to make up its own on a journey that always trends toward chaos. It is a movie for the sickos among us, unabashedly barbaric and macabre as it hurtles through violence that it puts first above anything else.
Shot and set in Taiwan, the story is almost irrelevant though it follows the young couple of Jim (Berant Zhu) and Kat (Regina Lei) who become separated during the initial onset of a plague that turns people into violent monsters. Jim must fight his way out of the apartment where his own neighbor attacks him while Kat must escape the confines of a train station to get back up to the surface. What makes this different from most other zombie films out there is that the people who become infected still speak. Even when their eyes have gone black, they continue taunting and insulting their victims all while attempting to eviscerate them.
Imagine the beings of 28 Days Later on steroids with even more unmitigated rage driving them. In The Sadness, they don't just want to kill others though they do with so frequency. They also want to torture, maim, and assault them. Consider this a warning that there is also a whole bunch of sexual violence on screen as well. Most of it stems from a menacing and misogynistic businessman (Tzu-Chiang Wang) who follows Kat off of the train. This is all part of what both sets it apart and also makes it a tough film to recommend on the whole.
It is a splatterfest that will provide thrills in its terror even as it frequently tips into being superficial. The film flaunts anything resembling nuanced restraint or inventive storytelling to prioritize sinking deeper into its extravaganza of unpleasantness. Some of this is mixed with silliness, such as when there is a news conference that has a clear visual reference to the 1981 horror film Scanners. This is where the creativity shines and the film has some fun mixing things up. At other times, the vulgar and horrific acts we see on repeat threaten to suck up all the oxygen. It is all about more blood and death, no matter the cost to the characters.
The film leans heavily on these sequences, excising any deeper sense of imagination or curiosity to prioritize beating you over the head with the equivalent of a blunt club. Does it succeed at being a shocking experience in a way most other zombie films do not? Without a doubt. Does it move the needle much more beyond that? Not particularly. The most interesting aspect is in how the film preserves the absolute worst parts of humanity underneath the maddening outer shell of who they have become. To hear a person continue to speak as they take a saw to a squirming corpse and spray blood everywhere undeniably gets under your skin. It just is a film where this is the sole focus, leaving everything else behind. It had the potential to be a revolutionary zombie film, and there are large aspects of it that still are, though it still falls into a regrettable malaise of mundanity when it didn’t need to.
While these increasing escalations of violence never lose their edge just based on how awful they are, it does so without any interest in providing variety in its storytelling. Horrible things happen in an apartment, a train station, a field, and a hospital, leaving it all feeling largely interchangeable. There is a bit of something resembling a twist, though it mostly exists to become a belabored exposition dump. Even as the film is unrestrained in its violence, it frequently runs into limitations it creates for itself. It is all about getting back to the main event of cruelty and chaos, sacrificing everything else at the altar of bloodthirstiness. It is an unmitigated horror show of gruesome gore, challenging our expectations of the zombie film with a riveting ruthlessness. This just leaves little else for it to stand on by the time it all ends.
It becomes caught between conflicting elements of wanting to push the envelope of what is possible to show on screen while often relying on repetition that begins to drag. There have been recent inventive zombie movies from Train To Busan to The Girl With All The Gifts that don’t skimp on the violence while also being more than just that. They go in interesting new directions that create a more varied and complete experience. While The Sadness goes further than any other film has into a pit of pain, it can be regrettably one-note and falls short of its full potential. Still, there is something to be admired in its audacity. It is a film that rises to the surface of the well-tread genre on an ocean of blood. It washes away everything else in its path, subsuming any sense of variation in pursuit of almighty anarchy. That may be a cup of tea for some, though praise to anyone who can swallow it all while keeping a straight face.