We watched The Sadness before it was available for streaming in the US because we are a big time movie review podcast. I can easily say that this is one of the craziest movies I’ve ever seen, and will stick with me for a long time.

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The Sadness follows boyfriend Jim (Berant Zhu) and girlfriend Kat (Regina Lei) on their normal day in Taiwan. Unfortunately for our couple, this normal day is the day that the Alvin virus hits their city.

The Alvin virus is a pandemic that they’ve been hearing about for a while but no one seems to be taking seriously.

As the virus hits their hometown, people start to die, and worse, rape each other in the streets.

The virus causes people to cry as they assault each other while simultaneously exhibiting total ecstasy in causing pain and torture.

It seems to unlock the most reprehensible parts of people and make them capable of depravity you’ve never even seen in horror movies.

Will Jim and Kat make it through, or will the sadness take them? 

Canadian writer, director Rob Jabbaz brought this manga adaptation of Crossed (Garth Ennis and Alan Moore)to Taiwan to film. This is his first full-length feature film.

Without question, this is one of the most depraved movies I’ve ever seen in terms of dialog. The violence is absolutely absurd and over-the-top. The themes are disgusting, and are meant to cast a light on the absurdities of politicizing a major health concern such as a pandemic. 

I heard a little bit about The Sadness before I watched it, enough to brace myself, which was good because I don’t think I would have enjoyed it otherwise.

The makeup, effects, and execution is unbelievable, rivaling that of similar splatter movies like Braindead / Dead Alive.

This is a slick movie that is well made, and outpaces most action movies handily. It’s also so absurdly disgusting that I imagine many won’t be able to finish it.

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It takes the old premise of zombies and the morality tales that they brought to the silver screen and pops a monster truck engine under the hood before sending you to hell with tears streaming from your eyes.

The Sadness is super gross, but it does have something of a point, which seems to make it easier to take in. 

The non-stop themes of rape, murder, and stupendously disgusting dialog where characters describe in vivid detail the acts of violent sodomy they wish to perform made me so happy that this wasn’t in English. Had I heard those words spoken in a language that I understood, I would have been sickened to my core.

The only movie that I’ve reviewed that left me feeling almost as gross as this was The House that Jack Built.

Not many will be able to get through this one and those who do will have to live with all those nasty thoughts in their head.

8/10

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