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FANTASIA 2021 REVIEW: THE SADNESS

 



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. The age of civility and order is no more. There is only “The Sadness.”


Starring: Regina Lei, Tzu-Chiang Wang, and Berant Zhu


Directed and written by: Rob Jabbaz


A Fantasia International Film Festival Review


  “The Sadness” only showed its face when the movie had to come to an end. Kat (Regina Lei) and Jim (Berant Zhu) wake to just another day in their lives. Each has their plans for the day, as they slowly get ready to leave their apartment. While Jim gets ready he has a show on talking about the potential for the current pandemic to spiral out of control. For the time being it’s been equal to everyone getting the flu.

  Well the ‘time being’ is about to run out! Jim stops at a diner for some breakfast, as the audience gets a few more clues how life has been. However, that’s not really going to matter once this person comes into the diner, attacks people, and causes chaos to spill into the streets. Jim can’t believe his eyes as he makes a run for his life. With Kat on his mind, he heads back home to figure out what’s going on, and how he can get to Kat.

  Bloody! Brutal! Depraved! Immoral! Sick! Savage! Gory! And yet all so beautiful to any fan of blood and guts! The scientist early on tried to warn people, and boy did this go wrong in a hurry. These people don’t turn into slow moving zombies out for brains. The infected here want people to suffer as much pain as possible before dying. In one scene a subway train car becomes painted blood red with death after death. 

  To add to the madness is that not only are the infected inflicting the pain, but they’re laughing and expressing the joy at what they’re doing. There’s also planning going on like when several of them are torturing a guy on a basketball court. Sometimes they will go after a specific individual like the infected businessman (Tzu-Chiang Wang) who becomes obsessed with Kat. He follows her from the bloody subway to a clinic that’s eventually overrun. In the process he commits a vile act to a woman Kat saved only for her to go on to get revenge on someone herself. It’s just absolutely wild how much carnage takes place.

  Wearing masks and deciding to take a vaccine or not is child’s play for how bad things could get like in “The Sadness.” Kat and Jim are just trying to make it as a couple in a relatively calm pandemic. Before they know it they’re on different sides of a city that is quickly becoming a test ground for who can commit the most disgusting act. Both of them will have to battle for their lives, and a chance to see the other in the end. There will be stabbings, broken bones, 

lost fingers, rape, clawing, bloody sex, fowl language, biting, shootings, and rivers and rivers of blood. Actually many beautiful pools of blood like the 5 pools of blood I’m giving this film! 


  HorrO


“The Sadness” is playing as part of the 2021 Fantasia Film Festival. 


More information at: https://fantasiafestival.com/en/film/the-sadness

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