‘You’re just like me… violent and depraved…‘
There was a time, as a younger man, when I would seek out the most ghoulish, most depraved corners of cinema and drink of them like an alcoholic drinks whiskey – in secret and with gusto. In this period, I imbibed Irreversible, Martyrs and Inside. I subjected myself to two of the three (!) Human Centipede movies. It was a strange time. When my wife gleefully sent me a link to an article claiming that The Sadness is the most extreme horror film since Martyrs, I inwardly shuddered. Having been irrevocably scarred by some of the aforementioned films, I really didn’t want to go down that road again. And sure enough, The Sadness is hideous…
When a mysterious plague turns most of the population into murderous psychopaths, Kat (Regina Lei) and her partner Jim (Berant Zhu) attempt to survive amidst a sea of violent assaults, unimaginable cruelty and one memorable scene involving eye-socket penetration. A sentence that I dearly hope to never have to write again.
Not much of a plot then. Nor any semblance of originality. Canadian writer-director Rob Jabbaz borrows liberally from 28 Days Later, The Happening, Stephen King’s book Cell and James Herbert’s visceral nightmarish novel The Dark. In fact, pretty much any zombie flick since George Romero entered the fray is ripped off in some way or another here. What marks The Sadness out from its peers is the sheer depth of its depravity. Within the first five minutes, someone has their face horrifically burnt and then clawed off to a soundtrack of agonised screams, and the frenzied violence never lets up from there. The dialogue is needlessly cruel, the gore scenes bordering on the perverted, and the whole thing is a macabre car crash of blood and guts that never lets up or slows down throughout its 100-minute running time.
The Sadness is not a good film, in any sense of the word, although it is visceral and visually inventive, and for those still drawn to the dark side of cinema, this film genuinely has the power to shock, but did I enjoy it? Not really.