The Sadness (2021)

The Sadness is certainly topical.  Indeed, a Taiwanese film about a virus causing havoc might strike some as "Too soon, Taiwan, too soon."  But they did it.  Taste and decorum don't matter.  The best time for 'thoughts and prayers' isn't after a high school shooting.  It's never.  Making a film about Covid sorry 'Alvin Virus' is only wrong if they do it badly.  So, did they?

The film does a lovely job of introducing our main characters, the carefree Jim and his more goal orientated girlfriend, Kat.  They wake up together, sleepily affectionate (though far more groomed than anyone waking up from a genuine sleep has any right to be.)

Treasure these moments, guys!  The next few hours will be rather tough on Jim and Kat

Blissful harmony does not last.  They bicker about Jim's failure to remember a holiday Kat had scheduled for them.  All the time, we're aware of warnings about the spread of 'Alvin Virus' - harmless enough just now but with the potential to mutate into a more deadly form with similarities to rabies.  Worse is to come.  Jim drives Kat to work on his funky little moped, witnessing the aftermath of what seems to be a grisly traffic accident along the way.

Worse is to come again, for Jim and Kat, and also for us.  After about 10 minutes of working us into their lives and making us care, the film-makers decide to throw it all away and The Sadness lurches suddenly into a silly gorefest, which absurd blood spouts, silly violence and some depravity that makes you wonder at the state of mind of the people who planned the film, without being truly horrific - because we're not taking the film or the characters seriously any more. 

Jim stops off to get something to eat - but an blood smeared old woman (glimpsed earlier) enters the restaurant and empties the deep fat frier over the cook's head.  His skin burns off before out eyes.  Minutes later, back in his apartment, Jim encounters his friendly neighbour being very unfriendly with some garden shears.

 

Me Heckle was a lot more assertive in the Taiwanese remake of Friends

And, you just now what is gonna happen to luckless Jim's luckless fingers ...

Undeterred, Jim sets off across the city to find Kat, who has had to deal with her own problems.  Stuck on a train with knife wielding rabid maniacs, she emerges, blood drenched and dazed, a half blinded, hapless woman called Molly in tow, and seeks sanctuary in a nearby hospital.

The train scene could have been terrifying - the idea of being trapped in a confined space with bloodthirsty killers is a staple horror trope - but here it is played in a grotesque, over-the-top, let's-out-Raimi-Sam-Raimi style it's impossible to maintain the crucial suspension of disbelief.  It's so floridly exaggerated we can't take it seriously - and if you can't take a horror film seriously it ceases to be a horror film and becomes just a sadistic comedy.

Wars have been fought with less blood spilled than gets wasted in this preposterous scene

And so the film continues, a series of bloody set pieces and exercises in staged depravity.  Jim struggles across the city; the infected storm the hospital; an unpleasant character Kat encountered on the train metes terrible revenge on the injured Molly, who isn't given any opportunity to do any thing in the film other than be a nuisance and meet a terrible end, mercifully framed so you see who is doing it to her, not what is being done.  And Kat seeks sanctuary with a virologist in a safe, sealed room, which might (unsurprisingly) turn out to be just as dangerous as the blood drenched hospital corridors.

The character of Molly is emblematic a lot of what is wrong with the this film.  So much of it seems to be happening for no purpose and in an incoherent, messy way.  True, you might argue that a rabies inspired zombie apocalypse might be a tad purposeless and incoherent, but I amn't talking about surface choas, but a deeper nihilism that lies at the story level.  Other than the vague quest of our lovers to be reunited, nothing much happens for any purpose.

Kat and Molly in what is basically a bloodier remake of Sliding Doors

Molly enters Kat's life as randomly as a seating choice; Kat wants to get away from a creepy business man who won't leave here alone, so gives her seat to Molly.  Then, as the slaughter unfolds on the train, she drags Molly to safety, even though the half-blind, traumatised woman is a near fatal dead weight.  But she does it.  Only for Molly to meet a gruesome end, trapped in a wheelchair.

There is a hint that someone might have had something more in mind for her, as her final words to Kat are a portentous "I won't forget you" - foreshadowing a crisis that never comes, where either zombie Molly does or does not recognise the still human Kat.  Or, when she meets her nemesis, the circumstances seem set up for her to offer herself in sacrifice to save her saviour - only Kat has already bolted upstairs to temporary safety.

Molly's presence in the film is pointless.  She isn't given any agency - the choice to be either brave or cowardly, to give her presence in the story - and ghastly doom - narrative meaning.  You could cut her from the story and nothing at all would change, apart from Kat having an easier time of things.  It neither endorses altruism, nor rejects it.  But I don't think horror films have the right to be ambivalent on these things.  They are about cruelty, terror and despair - how we respond to these stimuli is at the heart of the genre.  Molly's response is merely to sit and have savagery done to her.  It doesn't seem like this is the result of cowardice or philosophical resignation either - the film makers just wanted a meat puppet to practice savagery on.

Given the eventual fates that befall main characters, no matter how plucky or resourceful you are, there doesn't seem to be any hint Molly simply sitting there and taking it was any less of a valid response.  If there is any moral to be discerned in this mess of a film, it is bleak nihilism - no matter how good your life is, no matter how much you strive, it is only a moment or two from disaster.  And that is the findamental premise of almost every horror film, so it isn't worth writing home about.

There are a few references to other films.  The bloody and savagery seems reminiscent of early Cronenberg (The Sadness is directed by another Canadian, Rob Jabbaz which makes the interextuality a bit more credibile) - a gang of unpleasant young fellows who inconvenience Jim might have been survivors of The Brood and there is a curious sense of liberation and joy in the excesses of the ghouls (who crave sex as much as meat) is reminiscent of the orgiastic finale of Shivers - Mark Gatiss noted how the infected in that film seemed to be having more fun than their human counterparts.  Less helpfully, the fate of Molly might be a nod to A Serbian Film, and if you've seen that film that should be a hint of what she is in for.

There are a couple of scenes where the film makers dial back the gore and the noise and hint at what could have been - but The Sadness is a real missed opportunity for a proper horror film.   Still, if you want to laugh at people's faces being peeled off and people writhe around in fake blood, you'll get what you want.

Star Rating: *