Synopsis
A young couple trying to reunite amid a city ravaged by a plague that turns its victims into deranged, bloodthirsty sadists.
The Sadness is a gruesome horror film that was released on the Shudder streaming service in early May, and is also available on Amazon Prime. Having seen the red band trailer a couple weeks prior on YouTube, this seemingly unknown Taiwanese horror film caught my attention due to its excessive use of gore and violence. I’m a fan of foreign language horror films because they always seem to do it better – Train to Busan, Raw, Titane, Rec, etc.
The story focuses on a virus outbreak at the height of the pandemic, known as the Alvin virus, which provides a nice twist than your usual zombie films in that once infected the host doesn’t become a mindless killing machine unaware of their actions.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
The host is still very much in control of his or her body and actions with the exception that the virus causes its host to carry out his or her deepest, darkest and depraved desires and fantasies – murder, torture, rape and cannibalism, to name a few. Many people drew comparisons between this film and the comic series Crossed which follows the same sort of story or, should I say, lack thereof.
We open with a shot of our main protagonists Kat and Jim enjoying some alone time together before having to get ready for work. The camera lingers on Jim stroking Kat’s stomach (a pregnancy perhaps?) before the couple get into a rather pointless argument over a proposed weekend away which Jim has forgotten about due to work commitments. Before there’s even an ounce of bloodshed, the writing already feels like it was written by a child and it doesn’t get much better.
As Kat readies herself for work Jim has a smoke on the balcony and notices an elderly woman standing atop a nearby roof. When he calls to her, she turns round to reveal a bloody nightdress. As the next-door neighbour steps into view watering his plants, the mysterious woman disappears.
Kat gets dropped off at the train station whilst Jim heads for some brunch, noticing that elderly lady again and, in the words of the Joker from The Dark Knight, “here we…go”. She grabs the deep-fried basket of chips and pours it over the shop assistant before peeling off his flesh. She then vomits over a nearby customer which infects him. He then proceeds to stab his friend in the neck multiple times.
Cut to the Chase
What follows is a series of explicitly gruesome scenes, including a scene on a train that features more bloodshed than the bus scene in this year’s (woeful) Texas Chainsaw Massacre film. For a film that has a warning at the start of it for the excessive use of gore and violence involved, it’s almost laughable because there’s so much of it.
An idle bystander who gets stabbed in the neck and has blood literally shooting out of his wound with such ferocity that hits the ceiling and continues to spew. Another girl gets an umbrella through the eye and at one point, a live broadcast from the president of the country sees his General of Defense somehow mask the fact he’s infected (which is never explained), stick a grenade in his mouth, and blow his head off.
Take note: I’ve played enough Call of Duty games to know a grenade would blow up more than just someone’s head, it would damage the surrounding environment too.
Another scene features a baseball team beating up their coach, and after wrapping barbed wire to the pole then proceed to lift him and ram him into the pole privates first. As Jim fends off the attackers, the writing once again becomes depraved as the coach, rather than thanking Jim for saving him, shouts at him for scaring his attackers away as he was, and I quote “just about to shoot my load”. It’s here that we see the coach is also infected, so apparently infected also hurt each other (which again is a plot thread that’s never explained).
The Writing
The problem with this film is its writing. As I said earlier, you’d think it was written by a child. That is, an adolescent horny one whose no concept of what they’re writing and has nothing but obscene slurs to be used against the film’s female characters, which I will not repeat in this article but to put it bluntly, it’s damn uncalled for in my opinion.
I’m all for blood and guts and the occasional use of obscene language if there’s a story with fleshed-out characters to support it but with this film, the violence is so excessive and the language so obscene that it’s just not entertaining to watch or listen. The story most definitely doesn’t support its use, and I haven’t even mentioned the several rape scenes included which again, I won’t go into detail about.
Verdict
For a film with such promise, overall I was left disappointed by it. There’s far better films out there within this sub-genre that do it far better without the excessive violence, gore and language. My advice would be to seek them out instead.
Written by James Oliver | BanterFlix Contributor