Original-Cin by Thom Ernst

The Sadness is good. Not just genre-specific good, but cinema good. And even when it arrives at the inevitable ‘who are the real monsters’ scene, The Sadness still has bite.

Paste Magazine by Natalia Keogan

The Sadness is incredibly gorey and gleefully embraces just about every documented taboo—but instead of an exhausting edgelord sensibility, it accurately depicts just how little convincing a crumbling society needs to obliterate itself.

RogerEbert.com by Simon Abrams

The Taiwanese horror movie The Sadness is both conceptually exhausting and viscerally upsetting—an ideal summer movie for the third year of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The Film Stage by Jared Mobarak

The acts of violence writer-director Rob Jabbaz has his characters inflict upon each other are as depraved as can be and seemingly devoid of remorse.

The Guardian by Phuong Le

The recurring dependence on sexual violence as a shock tactic is, however, a desensitising misstep. Nevertheless the assured command of style situates Jabbaz as an impressive new voice in horror cinema.

CineVue by Martyn Conterio

For a debut feature, it’s impressive and thoroughly committed to its vision of Hell on Earth. The atrocities, bleak tension and stomach-churning imagery are unstoppable, the director deeming them necessary for maximum impact.

Polygon

[Rob Jabbaz] can’t find the proper measure of finesse and shamelessness to marry his grotesque gore and violence to, given the moral lessons he seems to think he’s obligated to offer.

Polygon by Austen Goslin

[Rob Jabbaz] can’t find the proper measure of finesse and shamelessness to marry his grotesque gore and violence to, given the moral lessons he seems to think he’s obligated to offer.