As a city is ravaged by an epidemic of sudden blindness, its victims are quarantined in a derelict hospital where a women fakes the illness to care for her beloved husband. From here, she leads her makeshift family of seven people, through a journey of horror and love in the attempt to break out of the hospital and into the devastated city, where they may be the only hope left in a brutal world that has descended into chaos. With danger around every corner how will they survive...?

Blindness is a bit of disaster from start to finish to be honest. The film tries to appear smarter than it actually is, but if you sit back and think about it, the movie makes no sense at all - and all those awkward plot devices are neatly swept under the carpet so that the audience never really appreciates how ludicrous the whole plot is.

Firstly we never get to learn any of the characters real names - in the subtitles they are merely referred to by their profession and so it's a little ludicrous in this day and age that Julianne Moore's character is simply known as "Doctor's Wife" (or "Wife" according to the subtitles). Really, after a few days in isolation would everyone revert to being so civilised. But then we never discover why the patients never receive proper food rations and hygiene essentials.

Then there's the fact we never learn why the government has everyone transferred to a secure hospital unit with no real facilities - yet they've got time to record some sort of information video and make sure it's piped through every ward in the hospital. Also it's never established why the army is brought in to guard the facility yet no one seems to be trying to help any of the blind. These people are simply blind, not animals, so why not offer entertainment through the TVs and deliver proper food rations and toiletries as well as some sort of waste collection - it appears that after only two minutes that everyone is living in their own filth.

We also never really get to learn the number of people affected - we only ever see two wards that are full, but it's never established roughly how many people are in the facility. It looks like only around 40-50 people which seems ridiculous. And how come the blind accountant is incarcerated? Wouldn't he have been able to prove he was already blind? And if the authorities were simply sticking everyone who was blind in isolation (just to be on the safe side) why are there not more people in there who have been blind for years?

And, once the characters finally get out into the real world, why are there bags of rubbish everyone on the streets? If we all went blind tomorrow would we all collect our rubbish, put it in bin bags, and leave it in the middle of the road?

While there are some pretty impressive actors in the cast the poor script really weighs everything down. Danny Glover is hysterically bad due to having to deliver some of the worst dialogue ever committed to film. Every now and then he pops up and delivers some narrative, for some unexplained reason. My favourite line of his was: "And for the length of the song the kingdom of the blind shrank to the circle of an AM radio." Classic! What does that even mean?

Extras include A Vision of Blindness (25 'Making of' featurette); five Deleted Scenes and Theatrical Trailer. I can't comment on any of these as I refused to waste any more of my time on this terrible film.

In a nutshell I hated just about everything about this movie. My advice is don't waste your time or money.

2

Darren Rea