Blindness
Miramax Films | Release Date: October 3, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
45
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 31 Critic Reviews
Positive:
8
Mixed:
16
Negative:
7
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
Seattle Post-IntelligencerBill White
Meirelles adds another perspective, that the epidemic might be a good thing if, by being thrown into the darkness together, we may once again recognize the human family to which we all belong. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
It's a rattling, heartrending performance (Moore) in, yes, a long, hard slough of a film – one that is well worth the journey, if not a repeat trip. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
It engaged me throughout and I found the ending to be surprisingly hopeful. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
At times almost unbearably ugly, but by the time you walk out of the theater, you know you've seen something. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianStan Hall
Visually nervy, beautifully acted, intense and philosophically compelling, it struggles to connect emotionally as it wrestles with the challenging source material. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
A perversely enjoyable, occasionally harrowing adaptation of José Saramago's 1995 disaster allegory. Read full review
63
New York PostKyle Smith
I kept hoping the meaning would click into place, but it never quite did. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
It's more like a filmed allegory. Read full review
60
NPRBob Mondello
Moore is always watchable, Ruffalo and Bernal get a nice rivalry going without ever establishing eye contact (as it were), and Danny Glover has some nice moments in an underdeveloped part as an older man who finds, to his benefit, that love is blind. Read full review
60
EmpireStaff (Not credited)
Handicapped by pretensions to making big statements, Blindness is still gripping, disturbing and intermittently powerful. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
As the players enact the fall and rebirth of civilization, Meirelles suggests that even a society gone to hell looks better with a little music-video-like pizzazz. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
There's a good movie here, but we get it in pieces that are sometimes hard to decipher. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Blindness is provocative cinema. But it also is predictable cinema: It startles but does not surprise. Read full review
50
VarietyJustin Chang
Meirelles' slickly crafted drama rarely achieves the visceral force, tragic scope and human resonance of Saramago's prose. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
This film is very different: chilly, methodical, a slave to 10-ton metaphor as opposed to metaphoric provocation. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Murky and grainy, and showing human beings at their grimmest - thievery, rape, betrayal, murder - Blindness is no barrel of laughs. But it IS a barrel of pretentious metaphorical musings. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia Puig
A brilliant idea that seems to lack the vision to be great. Read full review
50
Washington PostNeely Tucker
An arresting, often riveting film that is fascinating to look at but not nearly so interesting to watch. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
Not a great film, mainly because it can't transcend -- and, indeed, lays bare -- the intellectual flimsiness of its source. But it is, nonetheless, full of examples of what good filmmaking looks like. For all its chin-rubbing, brow-furrowing attitudes, it does not, in the end, give you much to think about. But there is, nonetheless, a lot here to see. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldConnie Ogle
For all its pretension and artiness, Blindness is more like M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening" (which at least had the decency to be fast-paced and short), right down to its upbeat and inane conclusion. Read full review
50
Baltimore SunChris Kaltenbach
You get the film's message, that mankind does not react well when challenged by unpleasantness it can't explain away, within the first 15 minutes -- leaving more than 100 minutes to ponderously belabor the point. Read full review
40
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
The trouble with Blindness is that it’s so preoccupied with shouldering this symbolic weight that it gradually forgets to tell a story--to keep faith with the directives of common sense. Read full review
40
Village VoiceAnthony Kaufman
Unflinching at best and treacly at worst, the film unveils its apocalyptic scenario with visceral intensity, but lacks the emotional sophistication to rise above schadenfreude kicks. Read full review
40
SalonStephanie Zacharek
An extended metaphor for the condition of man, and boy is it extended. In the course of two hours that crawl by like four and a half. Read full review
38
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Blindness is one of the most unpleasant, not to say unendurable, films I've ever seen. Read full review
38
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
A feel-nothing movie – a series of disconnected, implausible incidents that end as arbitrarily as they began, in an effort to inspire emotions the picture never justifies. Read full review
30
Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano
What was presumably intended to play like a fable plays, instead, like an overly long car commercial crossed with a scare-mongering public service announcement. Read full review
25
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
After a powerful opening, when we see the first victim suddenly go blind while driving in traffic, the film devolves into a dystopian freak show and wastes many wonderful performers, including Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore. Read full review
20
New York Daily NewsStaff (Not credited)
Piles on the indignities, violence and island-of-man turmoil. Read full review
10
Film ThreatMatthew Sorrento
The able cast can't swim through the muck. Read full review
0
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
This ends on an uplifting and philosophical note, equating moral blindness with the literal sort, which you'll probably appreciate if you haven't already slit your wrists. Read full review
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