Review: Shudder's 'The Sadness' Goes Where Few Have Dared But is it Good?

The Sadness is now streaming on Shudder. Reader beware spoilers ahead!

Shudder just debuted the Taiwanese film The Sadness, written and directed by Rob Jabbaz. The brutal gorefest stars Tzu-Chiang Wang (It’s Drizzling), Berant Zhu (We Are Champions), Regina Lei (76 Horror Bookstore) and In-Ru Chen. The film has been making its festival run having already been an Official Selection of Locarno Film Festival, Fantastic Fest, Frightfest and winner of “Best First Feature,” at Fantasia International Film Festival.

The city of Taipei suddenly erupts into bloody chaos as ordinary people are compulsively driven to enact the most cruel and ghastly things they can imagine. Murder, torture, and mutilation are only the beginning. A young couple is pushed to the limits of sanity as they try to reunite amid the violence and depravity. The age of civility and order is no more.

This film is for the horror fans who relish the gore, brutality and perversion. After the initial opening of the film, viewers are taken head first into a fast paced, violent and action packed movie with an exploding head à la Scanners. There is even a scene that not many filmmakers have dared to put on film. However before and after the blood starts flowing, The Sadness sticks close to the outbreak genre formula.

Like many other virus films, this one starts with the calm before the storm. We see Jim (Zhu) and Kat (Lei) waking in their apartment to get ready for the day. As they make their way to the train station viewers catch glimpse of trouble not far ahead. Our lovers pass by an accident scene where it’s clear something awful has happened. But since the police seem to have everything under control, the pair continue their journey. Unfortunately, it isn’t until after they head their separate ways that all hell breaks loose.

When The Sadness kicks off, it rarely lets up. From the first kill of someone’s face being melted into goo by fryer grease, we know that the filmmakers are going to be trying to set off our gag reflex. Which happens so often that you quickly become desensitized to much of it. Clearly the filmmakers wanted to push the boundaries of depravity here, but at points it felt like red tinted static. Too much blood in a sea of blood, so to speak.

No one is safe from the carnage, and speaking of carnage, it is everywhere. Just one infected person can plunge a whole train car into chaos. If you liked the party bus scene in this years Texas Chainsaw Massacre, be prepared for its gorier Taiwanese cousin. The makeup, costumes, and non stop blood are what make this film one to be seen. Some of the harshest deaths will get you with the jump scares while others might have you reaching for the trashcan. Its a practical effects all-you-can-eat buffet and you’ll have your plate filled more than a few times.

However, it isn’t just the gore effects that make this film brutal. Warning, there is a lot of sexual brutality in this film. One of the symptoms of the virus is committing extreme sexual violence against whoever is around. With a scene even going as far as someone having their ocular cavity penetrated. Which of course will remind those who have seen the infamous Serbian Film of a similar scene. After the initial shock of whats playing out on screen subsides, you’re left with the grossed out feeling which of course the whole point. But most of it, is carried out on and by non-main characters, thus making it get lost in the background.

No man or woman is safe from the sexual brutality that comes along with the virus. But it’s the unrelenting misogynistic businessman(Wang) who has his eyes fixed on Kat that really has an appetite for it. He stalks Kat from the train station to a nearby hospital leaving a trail of madness in his wake. There is a scene when a calumniation of the gore and sex play out together in the form of a bloody orgy, which almost feels like adding hot sauce to a pepper. It was grotesque just to be so, which made the sequence feel unintentionally funny.

Now this is the most violent and bloody film I have seen so far this year, but is it good? I’m not sure. This film has some great kills and scenes that will inevitably leave their mark on the genre. But the filmmaker failed to pull their story through the film. The Sadness focuses on two characters who aren’t given enough dialog or screen time for us to care about them. Making the overall story feel like background at best. So apart from seeing their fight for survival, we don’t emotionally connect enough to care who lives or dies. Thus leaving the film feeling like a crazy haunted house, one where we walk through scenes just for the scares.

While I do love gore and all the fleshy bits that come along with it. At times this film felt like it was trying so hard to push the boundaries that it gave off a sense of staleness. That fact that this is also a zombie/outbreak film further cemented the feeling of familiarity, like we’ve been here before. It’s hard to feel the stakes rising if you already know where the plot is headed. Plus I’m not a fan of spicy just for the sake of spicy, if you get my drift. 2.5/5

★★★