Dir. Rob Jabbaz | Now Streaming On: Shudder | Rating: 1/5

I’ve been called a zombie purist since I tend to prefer more old-fashioned zombie tropes and rhetoric. As horror iconography, zombies are known for historic films like White Zombie and Night of the Living Dead. They have held their own as a symbol of political unrest, otherness, and our innate fear of letting go. Simply, horror would be nothing without the undead. And on watching The Sadness, I know George Romero must be rolling in his grave.⁠
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Is The Sadness “the most violent and depraved zombie film ever made”? Sure, it probably is. Is it anything other than that? Well, that I’m not so sure of.⁠
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We see sprinklings of the subgenre with nods to COVID and human nature. But ultimately, the societal commentary that has come to be expected of zombie films is nonexistent in this gorefest. The storyline is barebones with little to no development of any characters. I was surprised to discover while researching that this film has extensive source material – the Crossed comic series by Garth Ennis. Though still of the garden splatterpunk variety, there could have been some story to build here. ⁠
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Now onto the ticket item everyone is talking about, the gore. The visuals and subject matter are violent and nauseating. I sat through this trying to decide if it should be filed under the exploitation category and still haven’t decided. We sit through the splatter, from an already saturated subgenre, to come away with nothing groundbreaking. ⁠
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The genre greats have brought more substance, class, and thought to the zombie narrative with a fraction of the nonsensical violence The Sadness delivers. This doesn’t hold a candle to its predecessors like Train to Busan, 28 Days Later, or The Crazies. You might win over the splatterpunk extremists with this, but with zombie fans? Dead on arrival. ⁠
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Know Before You Watch: Feature extreme gore and violence, nudity, rape, flashing lights, extreme language.