A mutant virus, excess gore, and violent zombie hordes: Taiwan’s first movie release in 2021
Some pre-release reviews say that the Made in Taiwan zombie flick The Sadness is different from horror movies such as Korea’s Train to Busan, because the monsters are not the living dead, but living humans that have mutated in such a way that they are hellbent on fulfilling the most evil desires in their hearts.
But, according to the official trailer, and research so far, The Sadness promises to be horrifying, and will probably rate quite highly on the cringe scale, nonetheless.
The film’s theme is “What is the most evil thought in your mind? Why not do it? according to publicists.
As such, the evil protagonists in the film are not mindless, shuffling corpses seeking to eat the brains of the living, but living mutants, seeking to kill for the thrill.
“It’s different from living dead and zombies! Taiwanese virus movie creates new type of “infected persons,” a headline on Yahoo News reads.
Make up and special effects seem to be the main attractive focus of the movie publicity, with the team IF SFX Art Maker (覺藝工作室) being responsible for creating most of the gore in the film.
In The Sadness, human beings are infected by a new virus that causes them to mutate and madly attack innocent people.
Because the mutated humans are not the living dead as depicted in the usual zombie films, the crew studied the effects of various diseases to create a new type of “infected,” Esther, of IF SFX Art Maker studio said in a Central News Ageny report.
The special effects team created 30 kinds of infection states, with each character having unique makeup that took around two hours per actor for the 15-person makeup crew, according to Mirror Media.
The plot of the movie starts as an ordinary working day, with the character played by Berant Zhu (朱軒洋) dropping his girlfriend, played by Regina (雷嘉納) off at the office.
What follows is the tale of how they each survive, find each other, and save the world.
The Sadness is due for release January 22.
| The Sadness | |
| Year： | 2021 |
| Production Company： | Machi Xcelsior Studios |
| Director： | Robert Anthony Jabbaz 賈宥廷 |
| Scriptwriter： | Robert Anthony Jabbaz 賈宥廷 |
| Producer： | Jeffrey Huang , David Barker |
| Executive Producer： | 盧維君 |
| Actor/Actress： | Berant Zhu , 雷嘉納 , Tzu-Chiang Wang , Chiu yen-hsiang , LAN Wei-Hua , Emerson Tsai , 黃略耕 , 陳映如 |
| Others : | 劉晉輔(Art Direction) , 白杰立(Cinematography) , 游凱翔(Gaffer) , Jimmy Hung(動作指導) , Victor CHANG(特化指導) , 余冠儀(服裝指導) , Azzurro Kuo(妝髮指導) , 連益杰(選色指導) , TZECHAR(作曲) , 郭家銘(髮妝師) , Ric Schnupp(Sound Designer) |
| Color : | Color |
| Running time： | 100 min |
| Language： | Chinese |
| Film Type : | Fiction |
| Genre : | Horror |
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