There was thunder, there was lightning
Then the stars went out
And the moon fell from the sky
It rained mackerel, it rained trout
And the great day of wrath has come
And here's mud in your big red eye
And the poker's in the fire
And the locusts take the sky
Well, the earth died screaming
While I lay dreaming
-The Earth Died Screaming, Tom Waits
I'm no doctor, but maybe the whole covered in blood hallway orgy thing could give ya AIDs? i mean you do you i guess...
this movie is heavily inspired by the Crossed comic book series written by Garth Ennis and drawn by Jacen Burrows. i cant say I'm familiar with that series, but i have been a big Garth Ennis fan for a long time. he is best known for the Vertigo series PREACHER, his nine-year run on Marvel Comics' PUNISHER franchise, THE INVISIBLES series, My favorite DOCTOR STRANGE comics, and THE BOYS with artist Darick Robertson. I Know Garth had nothing to do with this movie at all, but hopefully it has some of his standard gory as fuck nastiness.
The Sadness is a 2021 Taiwanese horror film written and directed by Canadian filmmaker Rob Jabbaz in his feature film directorial debut. After a year of combating a pandemic with relatively benign symptoms, a frustrated nation finally lets its guard down. This is when the virus spontaneously mutates, giving rise to a mind-altering plague. The streets erupt into violence and depravity, as those infected are driven to enact the most cruel and ghastly things they can think of. Murder, torture, rape and mutilation are only the beginning. A young couple is pushed to the limits of sanity as they try to reunite amid the chaos.
this movies kicks some serious ass in damn near every department. this movie opens on Jim and Kat a young couple living in Taipei, and there relationship is one of the best acted i have ever seen in a horror movie. this opening scene also establishes Rob Jabbaz incredibly slick directing style, and this movies equally incredible synthy soundtrack. we also get some very on the nose COVID chat about how this so far mundane virus has effected the economy and its citizens in a way that's unfortunaly very realistic. not much happens before the virus turns this movie into a nonstop bullet rain of gore and action, but there a lovely sense of dread as soon as this movie starts.
Jim then heads to a nearby café and witnesses the first of this movies large-scale atrocities. An old woman enters with blood on her nightdress and unusually large, dark irises. Ignoring the concern of other customers, including Jim, she spits in a man's face and throws hot cooking oil on the worker behind the counter melting his face off and playing with his burning face skin for a bit. its a level of nasty that is highly over the top without even a hint of censorship, and we haven't even gotten to the really horrific shit yet. while Jim deals with the café craziness Kat boards her train and endures an awkward encounter with the Businessman, a middle-aged creep who praises her beauty and confesses that he has been watching her for some time. She switches seats with another passenger, Molly, to avoid his unwanted advances.
but our business boy is just a red herring for now, since an infected stranger on the train brutally starts stabbing whoever is closest to him with a knife resulting in biblical levels of blood covering the Train car. this movie first big outbreak scene was more nasty than scary, but this subway sequence scares the shit out of me. it feels painfully realistic when the first few people get stabbed, and its all the more difficult that these people seem fully aware of what they are doing. this isn't a gang of mindless corpses shambling along looking for brains, these are fully alert men and women literally doing the most evil things you can imagine. it one thing to read those words on some kids blog, but to see it on screen is beyond horrific.
This movie really shows the emotional impact of what living through this hell would feel like, with enough insane violence to really be effectively terrifying.
and no animals die whatsoever, so thats a plus
9/10
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