Film Review: THE SADNESS: Gore Filled Movie is Surprisingly Interesting Despite Too Much Violence [Locarno 2021]

The Sadness Review

The Sadness (2021) Film Review from the 74th Annual Locarno Film Festival, a movie directed by Rob Jabbaz, and starring Regina Lei, Berant Zhu, Ying-Ru Chen, Tzu-Chiang Wang, Lue-Keng Huang, Wei-Hua Lan, Raif Chu and Emerson Tsai.

From Taiwan comes, perhaps, the most violent film ever made. It’s called The Sadness and it takes on some timely themes as it maintains viewer interest even if the viewer is looking away every couple of minutes due to all the violence taking place on screen. This film revolves around the Alvin virus–any similarities to COVID are most likely purely intentional. Though the movie seems to be about a pandemic initially, it soon becomes something much more frightening.

Regina Lei and Berant Zhu are the film’s attractive young stars. They play a couple named Kat and Jim who are in bed together when we are first introduced to them. They are discussing Kat’s desire for Jim to appreciate the fact that she just got some time off from work and she would like the pleasure of his company. She wants to spend time with him. It’s seemingly a normal day and the couple separates to go off on their daily routines.

At a local restaurant, an odd-looking older man who resembles a zombie appears. This man pours hot oil that is used to cook french fries on a man’s face and the plot begins as people are soon acting violent towards each other as they suddenly become filled with an inexplicable rage.

The best sequences in the film revolve around Kat. She sits on the train trying to read a book as an older businessman (Tzu-Chiang Wang in the film’s most memorable performance) attempts to make small talk with her. He asks her about what she’s reading and she wants to be left alone as he pushes her too far by starting to ask personal questions. All of a sudden, a violent attack occurs on the train and another woman named Molly is severely injured. Kat tries to help Molly as the people around her violently (and brutally) attack one another. When they escape, the older businessman is in pursuit of them looking to do unspeakable things to these two women.

Meanwhile, Jim is trying to contact Kat while dealing with some very disturbed people who are assaulting one another, to put it lightly. One scene where Jim tries to help a guy being beaten up sadistically results in the man being saved but then this guy tells Jim he actually liked the beatings he was receiving. This is quite an unusual film.

Rob Jabbaz is the director of this bloody nightmare come to life. Jabbaz stages his scenes with remarkable creativity and maintains suspense throughout. Perhaps cutting at least 10 minutes of gruesome footage may have been in his favor to find a bigger audience for the film, however. Die hard horror fans will probably be the only ones to make it through some of the more horrifying parts of the film.

This is not the most disturbing film I have seen, however. That title still goes to Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built. The Sadness greatly exaggerates its violence whereas von Trier’s film had a more authentic feel that made it all the more disturbing. Neither film is easy to watch but if I had to see one again, I’d definitely go with The Sadness.

Jabbaz keeps the pacing of his film on point through the whole entire movie although when key characters do cruel and nasty things to other people, some audience members will undoubtedly look away. Zhu gives a worthy performance as Jim but it is Lei as Kat who turns out to be the star of the film. Lei is a great movie heroine and we want to see her escape this nightmare that has come to life. Tzu-Chiang Wang is super scary as the older pervert businessman who won’t rest until he attacks Kat.

The whole idea of the Alvin virus being behind the violence people inflict on each other in the film is explained in an interesting way and the movie introduces a doctor late in the film who details everything to the audience and, more directly, to Kat. The movie deals with the pandemic by having a key character or two discuss their opinions on whether or not it’s real or a hoax. For whatever reason, the Alvin virus is definitely not a joke and the film wisely keeps politics to the side, for the most part, except for a couple of select scenes.

The Sadness could use some edits in order to become a more mainstream horror film. It has all the ingredients of a successful horror picture. As it is, the movie will only appeal to hardcore horror addicts but will definitely be the highlight of their year.

Rating: 7/10

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