Horror has always been quick to adapt to shifting cultural paradigms and current events, and a pandemic-driven cinematic wave of nihilistic isolation and eco-horror despair is well underway as seen in films like We Need to Do Something and In the Earth. So it was only a matter of time until the COVID-19-era zombie film took shape; one could even argue that time already passed considering Charles Band’s Corona Zombies, released in April of 2020. Thankfully Rob Jabbaz‘s The Sadness is not Corona Zombies, but it is a deranged gorefest of infected terror that embraces human darkness and unbridled depravity to become a standout modern entry in the zombie genre.
A crimson handshake between the madness plague of Romero’s The Crazies and the extreme depravity of Garth Ennis’ Crossed comic, The Sadness doesn’t tell a story as much as it drops the audience into a blood-drenched snapshot of disoriented chaos. Set in the Taiwan capital of Taipei, Jabbaz‘s debut starts with mundane familiarity: young couple Jim (Berant Zhu) and Katie (Regina Lei), a groggy weekday morning, news reports about the ongoing “Alvin” virus and pleas to a pandemic-tired populace to stay inside to prevent mutations from emerging. Unnerving omens of odd neighbors and increased EMT presence plague an unassuming workday commute until The Sadness has had its fill of tension and erupts into a pursuit through a city engulfed in sadistic viral mayhem.
Jabbaz’s direction may be slickly-shot but, his film’s truest cinematic ancestors are the savage brutality of Hong Kong CAT III films and ‘90s shot-on-video splatter, where deranged mean-spirited glee for provocation and bloodshed could propel a runtime as much as plot. Once the couple goes their separate ways – Jim stopping for a coffee, Katie on a crowded subway – a relentless onslaught of infected chaos begins and doesn’t stop till the end credits. Faces reduced to sloughing viscera and ripped apart by clawing hands, a train car massacre drowned in ungodly gushes of crimson, orgies of mindless sadomasochistic torture to a backdrop of mad cackling. With Zhu and Lei largely stagnant as desperate survivors trying to escape bedlam and reunite, The Sadness’ stars become the infected themselves, imbued with terrifying presence through tear-stained black eyes and unnatural rictuses that widen at the sight of their carved, dismembered, assaulted, and otherwise brutalized victims.
Jabbaz occasionally allows his whirlwind of ultraviolence to ease up, and in those moments of respite, one start to realize that his film is severely lacking in characterization and a purpose beyond bloody carnage. Compared to evocative ilk such as Cronenberg’s early psychosexual cinema Shivers and Rabid, The Sadness’ hollow zombie clichés and void of plot threatens to erode enjoyment. An exposition-heavy pace-halting final act in a hospital suffers the most in that regard, the Spartan narrative and naked desire to shock at their most blatant. But when the film embraces its grotesque effects and panicked confrontations, it’s easy to be swept up in the kinetically-directed thrills.
Despite a lack of more narrative punch, it’s hard to deny the momentum of the film’s propulsive chases and outrageous splatter. Movies this bleakly gnarly yet rollickingly intense are an increasingly rare breed. Rob Jabbaz‘s uncompromising commitment to pure survival horror and unbridled gory depravity make The Sadness one of the most singularly nasty and impressively vicious genre debuts to come around in some time.
The post The Sadness appeared first on Spectrum Culture.