Fantasia Fest 2021: ‘The Sadness’ is a nasty, nihilistic bloodbath

Content Warning: The film depicts truly graphic violence and acts of sexual assault and rape

I watched The Sadness 17 hours ago, and my mouth is still agape. There are few films which have grossed me out nearly as much as this apocalyptic, contagion-based horror-show. Writer/director Rob Jabbaz bathes you in nastiness, and it’s not only the buckets and buckets of blood spewing from severed arteries or the countless decapitations — extreme sexual violence also takes centerstage. It’s graphic, gnarly, and downright nihilistic. For many, you may not be able to stomach what Jabbaz has in store. Developed and filmed throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, the Taiwanese feature takes specific cues, including charged political rhetoric, to ground its own heart-pounding bloodfeast.

The film opens on our two lead protagonists Kat (Regina Lei) and her boyfriend Jim (Berant Zhu) snuggling in bed. The dawn has just broken, and there’s an eerie serenity floating in the air. With plans to take a trip to Kenting the very next week, which Jim totally forgot about, instead taking on a new job with a German ad agency, the couple have a loving relationship but suffer from obvious work and life troubles. Just as you get comfortable, Jabbaz begins peeling away the too-perfect layers; first, Jim spots an elderly woman, glancing lifelessly into the distance, on a nearby rooftop, as she turns to reveal her blood-soaked nightgown. Later, on their way to work, Kat and Jim witness the first bursts of chaos on the street. They both shrug it off as a random occurrence, but the film quickly jumpstarts into the kind of flesh-eating mania we’ve come to expect from the genre — with a high-voltage unease and gruesomeness that rivals its many groundbreaking predecessors.

Kat and Jim are soon separated, left to spend the entirety of the film trying to find one another. They both must contend with their own grisly circumstances and claw their way through humanity’s swift implosion. While being chased down by a group of psychologically-transformed beings (they’re not zombies; as we learn, the aggression and sexual drive components of the brain have been ratcheted up to 100), Jim witnesses a woman hurl herself from a high rise, her head going splat! like a bug on the concrete. He eventually makes his way back to his apartment where he fights off neighbor Mr. Linn, who attacks him with a pair of gardening shears, clipping off two of Jim’s fingers. It’s an assault on the senses, whizzing by at a breath-taking rate, and you never have a moment’s peace to collect your wits about you.

The Sadness devolves even further. Moments before the mass breakout, Kat is busy reading her new favorite novel on the train when an unnamed businessman (Tzu-Chiang Wang) makes unwanted and aggressive advances. Kat does her best to brush him off, leaving him to sputter some nonsense about “women are all the same these days” under his breath. In a later train stop, a hive of people board, and naturally, one of them has already turned. He pulls out a knife and viciously stabs as many passengers as he can, manically smiling and laughing as he does so. It’s a bloodbath of the highest order.

With an extremely thin storyline, the film excels in its waves of gross-out setpieces. A zombie-fied woman pours a vat of boiling-hot grease on a shop clerk, then proceeds to peel off the bubbling layers of his skin. A young girl is stabbed in the eye with an umbrella cane. Throats are slashed. Limbs are chopped and mutilated. But that’s the easy stuff. Kat eventually makes it to the hospital, a location seemingly unscathed at first, but it too is soon consumed by rage-filled violence the likes that’ll make your stomach do backflips. Women are raped. A head explodes Scanners-style. Countless bodies writhe in pools of blood amidst intercourse. It’s (mostly) all very explicit, so beware before you enter.

The Sadness is the epitome of nihilistic cinema. It’s so grim and gross and perhaps unnecessary that I’ll be intrigued to hear how many viewers can make it through the 96-minute runtime. At the very least, it’ll be a viewing experience you’ll never forget.

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