“The Sadness” is a new zombie movie being released this Friday in Taiwan.  I can’t watch movies so I won’t see it until it’s available for download, but it has such an interesting and topical message that I want to see it.

It’s similar to “28 Days Later” and “28 Weeks Later” in that those infected with a virus are still human and not actually dead.  But it goes one further: They retain their intelligence.

It’s also similar to the description of Grunts in iD software’s 1995 game, “Quake”:

Grunt: Goons with probes inserted into their pleasure centers; wired up so when they kill someone, they get paroxysms of ecstasy. In essence, customized serial killers.

Quoting the tag line from the trailer below: “What is the most terrible thing you can think of?  Why not do it?”  

The infected no longer care about others, only about themselves and their most base desires.  It sounds very much like anti-maskers blathering about “freedumb!” and they don’t care if they infect and kill other people.  That’s unnervingly comparable to today’s social and political world.

Taiwan-made zombie movie creeps into theaters Friday

A Taiwanese horror film featuring a new type of sentient “infected person” hits theaters in the country on Friday (Jan. 22).

The film, titled “The Sadness” (哭悲), is produced by Machi Xcelsior Studios (麻吉砥加電影有限公司) and features plentiful gory makeup by IF SFX Art Maker (覺藝工作室). The story is about an outbreak of a new virus that causes humans to transform into horrifying, bloodthirsty mutants that can think and speak.

Here’s a link to the second trailer.