Rob Jabbaz’s directorial debut will be added to the annals of extreme horror, but without much meaningful messaging the film becomes violence for nothing more than violence’s sake.
The title of this bloody film doesn’t give much away, but it doesn’t take long before the movie reveals exactly what the next 99 minutes have in store. The Sadness takes place in present-day Taipei as a novel virus—because we haven’t had enough of that—begins to sweep through the city. The primary symptom? An uncontrollable lust for violence. The plot is held together by a Taiwanese couple’s attempts to reunite from across the city in the midst of the gory chaos. Through their trials we bear witness to such heinous sights as a man raping a woman’s eye socket, teenagers bashing their friend’s testicles against a pole, and a crazed, blood-soaked orgy. Speaking from personal experience, this is not a movie to watch with the family.
Critics have consistently rated The Sadness quite highly. Unfortunately, Jabbaz’s film does not live up to the acclaim. One major issue is that the narrative doesn’t do much to draw the viewer in. Lovers fighting hordes of lunatics to be reunited could be heart-wrenchingly great, but the two don’t make a believable couple. Berant Zhu (who plays Jim) and Regina Lei (the actress playing Kat) make a good-looking pair, but there is no on-screen chemistry. Their only kiss looks like someone made siblings lock lips. Rather than their separation doing anything to increase tension or get the audience emotionally involved, it’s clear that the narrative was structured to fit in as much gore and violence as possible.
The gore and violence is gratuitous, to say the least. And the practical SFX have to be acknowledged; they’re excellent. At times, they’re a bit over-the-top, but it’s the kind of over-the-top genre fans readily welcome: a man’s throat is cut and a fountain of blood gushes out, painting the subway car crimson; a guy’s leg gets hacked off and the ax-wielder vomits onto the oozing, gaping wound. These scenes suggest that Jabbaz has the chops to do something great in the genre. However, these great moments are overwhelmed by a seemingly neverending parade of sexual assault and abuse. The physical sexual violence is compounded by liberal use of degrading language. A clear villain emerges when an incel-ideology-spouting man on the subway car Kat is riding becomes infected and marks Kat and her new friend Molly as his chosen victims. He chases them, shouting obscenities, telling them that he hasn’t had a threesome before, and announcing he hasn’t been so aroused in ages (this last stated in more explicit terms), before he eventually rapes Molly’s eye socket. In an interview with Grimoire of Horror, Jabbaz explained that there isn’t a version of the film with a more explicit eye-socket rape scene (why one would want it, I’m not sure) because he didn’t want the audience to “turn on the film” in the sense that the subject matter would become a punchline. It seems that Jabbaz wasn’t able to effectively draw this line, because the sexual violence does end up coming across as a sick joke. It’s just too much.
Regrettably, the film doesn’t really have a reason to show so much sexual violence except for Jabbaz wanting to shock his audience. The film thematically lacks substance. Allegory it is not. The few moments that seem like they could contain social commentary, upon closer inspection, actually just read like gimmicks stolen from your crazy aunt on Facebook: the virus is fake, the government is clueless, the scientists are sadists, and so forth. Sure, it serves as a bit of comic relief, but sandwiched between so much sexual violence as it is, it’s hard even to crack a smile. Jabbaz has himself admitted that the intention of the movie is not to make any sort of political commentary, but simply to grab attention using cruelty and vulgarity.
Maybe I, at the ripe old age of 25, have become a withered prude. But it seems to me that without a more concrete purpose, extreme bloodshed and depictions of sexual violence feel fetishized by Jabbaz. Though his film doesn’t strictly qualify as a zombie film, because those infected are not dead, most seem to think of it as one. In the aforementioned interview, Jabbaz was asked to share his favorite zombie film and he shared that his favorite is Return of the Living Dead—because it’s “fun and mean.” He seems to have missed, or just doesn’t care, that the film makes biting (no pun intended) social commentary. A horror film is allowed to be transgressive with its violence, and it’s allowed to not have any deeper meaning, but if it is going to be transgressive, especially with the topic of rape, it better have a damn good reason beyond “I want people to talk.”
A review from The Guardian touts the film as “inventive,” but can that really be said of a film strongly inspired by a comic-book series (Crossed) that relies heavily on the shock value of rape? The idea of a rage virus that leaves people conscious and aware of their crimes is an interesting idea to be shown in film and there are some good bloody scenes, too, but this isn’t a film that I can recommend.