One of my most anticipated movies of 2008, Blindness is directed by Fernando Meirelles, the man behind such visually stimulating films as The Constant Gardener and City of God. Given his stunning resume, Blindness looked like a sure lock for one of the best movies of the year. Starring Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore, the movie is about a horrifying virus that spreads throughout the country, causing everyone – except for Moore’s character – to go blind. That’s pretty bad ass.

Unfortunately, Blindness isn’t nearly as good as I was expecting. Decent, yes, but the film never fully clicks. Some of the character reactions and plot points don’t make sense. Most shockingly, the film is visually dull. Maybe all of those protesters outside the theater stating, “Blindness is not bad,” or something could have saved their breath. While I’d still recommend the movie to people who want something different, it’s not nearly as good as it could have been.

Blindness comes to DVD on February 10th, and with it only a couple of bland bonus features. Included are a few deleted scenes, some of which are decent but rightly removed, and a making-of documentary. The featurette is pretty long and in-depth, but not a very well done production. Whoever made this documentary clearly was aiming to put something on their resume, as it looks and feels more like the movie than a behind-the-scenes production. This could have been neat, but its visuals and narrative distract from the gritty stuff we want to see. A lot of interesting things are shown or alluded to, but it would have been more effective to just plop the director down in the chair and have him talk about it.

There are a lot of good nuggets to be found here, but the featurette itself is poorly done.

And that’s it. No audio commentary, interviews with the cast or anything else. Blindness is an OK movie with lame special features… rent it, but don’t drop a lot of cash on this one.

Read my full Blindness movie review.