Written by Ryan Dailey
Hollywood, listen up. The Sadness is the type of tension filled, somewhat politically driven horror film that is possible to be created when you do not handle your audience with kid gloves and not play to them as though they are ignorant.
Rob Jabbaz’s directorial debut could have gone south very quickly, given the commentary on the Coronavirus and its effect on society. Luckily, the director does not shove his opinions on current events down our throats and gives us a preachy, lukewarm movie. He does quite the opposite. Jabbaz gives the horror genre an extreme horror film that pulls no punches.
The topic is tired, and it could be compared to a number of films that came before it, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later and The Crazies, just to name a few.
Kai (Regina Lei) and her lover, Jim (Berant Zhu) awaken one day in the middle of an outbreak of the Alvin virus, which is the stand-in for Covid-19 in this film universe. From the moment they part ways to go about their mundane tasks, the movie becomes the typical tale of two people in love trying to find one another amidst a zombie outbreak.
This is where the movie starts to shine, despite falling victim to one of the biggest horror movie tropes. While the journey is familiar, the paths that this film takes to get to the final destination is what sets it apart. The Sadness takes every taboo one could possibly think of and puts it right there on the screen, that if not done properly, would make the film nothing but shock horror in the vein of A Serbian Film. The Sadness manages to give us just enough background on the main characters without bringing the movie to a screeching halt.
From that point on, however, this film watches the way a Stephen King novel read before he became sober. The rest of the one hour and forty minute run-time can only be described the way my debut collection of short stories was explained as being. “Gonzo-Macabre.”
If you are not one that is easily triggered, The Sadness is definitely worth your time.
The Sadness Is streaming on Shudder and Amazon Prime.