As Taiwan succumbs to a viral pandemic that transforms peaceful citizens into sadistic, bloodthirsty maniacs, a young couple must battle to be reunited before they too become infected.
Seen by many as a Spiritual Successor to Crossed.
The Sadness provides examples of:
- And I Must Scream: Dr. Wong reveals that the Alvin virus victims are entirely aware of the atrocities they're all committing, hence why they're all crying. The infectees don't want to kill, rape, or brutalize all these people, but they can't control themselves anymore because of the virus.
- And Then John Was a Zombie: The film ends with Jim becoming an infected.
- Agony of the Feet: Numerous instances, but one that stands out the most is Dr. Wong getting half of his feet chopped off, and then being gnawed and puked on what's left of it.
- Berserker Tears: Most of the infected are shown shedding tears even as they're gleefully brutalizing the uninfected. Doctor Wong theorizes this might be due to them being aware of the atrocities they're committing, but completely unable to stop themselves; the virus leaves most brain functions intact.
- Black Eyes of Crazy: The eyes of the Alvin virus victims become pitch black, which makes them appear even more inhuman with the big, cruel smiles on their faces. Jim's eyes also turn black when his infection takes hold at the movie's end.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The infected are actively trying to find and try out new, more cruel and more horrific ways of killing their victims, routinely torturing them to death.
- Decoy Protagonist: We've got Jim, who is poised as being the main character, but then the focus shifts to Kat, the actual main character, while Jim's part of the story gets sidelined.
- Do Wrong, Right: At one point, Jim saves a man from being tortured to death. He turns out to be infected, too, and is furious that Jim prevented further beating, as the man was close to cumming.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Its a 2021 movie where a highly infectious virus that proper authorities try and prevent the spread of by telling people to stay indoors away from crowded areas, only for people not to listen to this mandate and things go terribly wrong because of it. Later, Dr. Wong claims that the proper authorities had known about the incoming outbreak for years and instead of working on preventing it, sowed mistrust in medical professionals amongst the populace in a gambit for reelection. Is this a Hate Plague splatter movie, or an allegory for the COVID-19 Pandemic?
- Downer Ending: The disease overruns the city. Kat, who may or may not have been immune to the virus, thus being the source for a potential cure, snaps before getting gunned down by the military.
- Expy: The Alvin Virus infectees are one to the Crossed.
- Eye Scream: Molly loses an eye to the Businessman. Later on, he sexually violates her eye socket.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The plot takes from dawn till dusk of a single day.
- Fingore: Two of Jim's fingers are cut off early on in the film.
- Foreshadowing: When Jim finally makes it to the hospital his gait is noticeably casual and unhurried, along with the lack of focus on his face giving a pretty big hint that he's now infected.
- Hate Plague: The Alvin Virus turns those infected by it into sadistic, Ax-Crazy spree killers that hunts any non-infected they can find so that they can torture, rape, kill and/or infect them. Dr. Wong reveals that the virus effects the limbic system, the part of the brain that controls aggression and the sex drive, and that the reason why they shed Berserker Tears is because underneath their Slasher Smiles and sadomasochistic actions, their non-infected consciousness is fully aware of what is happening and are powerless to stop.
- The Heavy: The Businessman is the closest thing a film has to a main antagonist as he pursues Kat throughout.
- Hope Spot: Tripley-so. After Kat goes five minutes after being injected with infected blood without turning, revealing that she's immune to the virus, two infected break in and infect Dr. Wong. She tries getting him to the roof so that the military can take her and make a cure, only for an infected Jim to show up and kill the doctor. While Kat gets away, it's implied that her infection was just on a delay and we hear the military shooting her down on the roof.
- The Immune: Kat. Maybe.
- Info Dump: Dr. Wong unloads one that lasts for nearly ten minutes, briefing Kat on the situation.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence: Since the result of the Alvin virus is the reduction of personality to pure id, all the infected want is to murder and copulate. In either order.
- It Can Think: The infected are still perfectly capable of thinking and planning their actions, not to mention using tools and overcoming obstacles. Which is what makes them so damn dangerous - they might be focused entirely on killing and mauling people, but they do it in a methodical fashion. As Dr. Wong points out, those people are also still perfectly aware of their actions, but just can't control themselves.
- Laughing Mad: At the end of the film an infected Jim declares to Kat how wonderful he feels and the most loving act he can think of is to torture and mutilate her. The latter's horrified crying turns to giggling and laughs before she runs up to the roof, it's left ambiguous whether her sanity just understandably snapped, her supposed immunity was just a delay of the infection that finally hit, or a combination of the two.
- Look Both Ways: The old woman from the bar gets run over by a car after focusing entirely on stalking Jim.
- Loser Protagonist: Jim is the standard "young adult without much ambition or prospects in front of him", so when the plague hits, he needs to quickly sort his shit and save Kat. He gets infected half-way through, and by the time he reaches her, all he wants to do is murder her and rape her corpse.
- Militaries Are Useless: They are doing their best, but things go down the drain at such a pace, there is barely anything left to salvage. Especially when the Chief of the General Staff blows the head of the president on live TV.
- No-Sell: Downplayed. Alvin virus victims can still die by conventional means, like getting shot with a pistol. However, now that they're entirely sadomasochistic from the disease, getting hurt is a new way of pleasure for them.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Alvin virus infectees aren't zombies, per se. In fact, when they do eat another person, it's out of sadistic pleasure, not because they're hungry; they just want to kill as many people as possible while spreading the infection. The infectees are still technically people and can die by traditional means, but with their inhibitions turned off, it's a bit harder to kill them; if anything, they enjoy the pain. They can still talk and, worst of all, can use weapons and run. The arguably tragic part of the infectees is that they know what they're doing is wrong. These people don't want to kill or rape all these innocent lives, but with the virus affecting their Limbic systems, the part of the brain that controls aggression and the sex drive, they can't stop themselves, hence the tears.
- Psychosexual Horror: The movie is centered around a virus that affects the alembic system: the part of the brain that regulates sexual and violent urges. The end result is an outbreak that turns Taiwan into a slaughterhouse overrun by uninhibited serial killers and rapists.
- Rain of Blood: A man gets stabbed in the neck in a way that causes an absolutely unrealistic geyser of blood that hits the roof of the metro car and splashes the blood everywhere.
- Reliably Unreliable Guns: Dr. Wong has a 3D printer-made pistol for self-defense, while being able to kill a pair of infected it suffers a brief, nasty, jam and eventually explodes outright on the fifth shot, (3D printer firearms made entirely of plastic generally don't last long) which leads to his death at an infected Jim's hands.
- Scary Teeth: For whatever reason, the infected get their teeth crooked and rotten within hours.
- Shout-Out:
- The opening sequence with the virus replicating is very reminiscent of the sequence from Rob Jabbaz's previous project, the short movie Clearwater. So is the make-up and general design for the infected.
- There are enough similarities with Crossed (not to mention the over-the-top nihilism and brutality) to chalk the whole thing as either a Homage or a
Spiritual Successor. - A movie about a Hate Plague that turns people into Technically Living Zombies has a male lead named Jim and he's trying to save the woman he loves. We're talking about 28 Days Later, right?
- Sleazy Politician: The fictional president of the Republic of China is presented as a rating hound that would do anything to get re-elected. Including first doing his very best to discredit concerns over potential dangerous epidemic and then, when it does happen, trying to milk that anyway.
- Spiteful Spit: After cutting two of Jim's fingers off, Mr. Lin picks one, chews it for a moment and then spits it into the fish tank.
- Super-Persistent Predator: When the Business Man becomes infected, he starts to stalk Kat and Molly from the train station all the way to the hospital. Intent on finishing them both off.
- Technically-Living Zombie: The plague turns people into bloodthirsty maniacs.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The MO of the infected is to actively seek over-the-top means of killing other people.
- Too Kinky to Torture: The infected will usually gang up and torture each other when there are no other uninfected victims around them, the tortured infected taking obscene masochistic pleasure in the act. Special mention goes to a man being tortured by a team of baseball players, the tortured infected asking why Jim stopped them because it nearly brought him to orgasm.
- Undead Child: Of the Technically-Living Zombie variety. Dr. Wong keeps an infected baby in the trashcan of his lab, presumably using it for a fresh, easy to contain supply of infected blood to test with.
- The Virus: The Alvin virus, turning people into crazied maniacs within minutes. It's highly contagious, and it's not even made clear what the vectors are (it might be even airborne), but it spreads like fire.
- Would Hurt a Child: A sympathetic example. It's revealed that after locking himself in the maternity ward, Dr. Wong killed all of the newborn babies there to ensure that they wouldn't be tortured, raped, and cannibalized by infected adults. It's slightly complicated with the added reveal that he did infect the babies beforehand to test their immune systems, which he defends as the most brutally logical move since they were going to die anyway.
- Your Head A-Splode: A grenade is stuffed into a man's mouth, blowing up his head.
