A blind woman staggers towards her balcony. She climbs onto the balcony railings as the camera shadows her from behind. She pauses for just a moment and then jumps. The title card fades in. Sightless begins on a great note. You are instantly hooked. Unfortunately, the rest of the film never lives up to this intrigue.
Even the very premise of the film, despite this fairly promising beginning, isn’t particularly novel. Director Cooper Karl employs tropes that have been familiarised by films such as Rear Window (1954) and Disturbia (2007). It feels like Shutter Island (2010) is another inspiration, but that’s not to say this film is nearly as effective with its twists and its core conceit. The film is, in essence, a hodgepodge of good ideas that fail to come together to form a riveting whole. You get a weird feeling that the makers have been cooped up for a year watching Christopher Nolan pictures, but not really exiting the room with the right lessons.
Ellen Ashland (played by Madelaine Petsch of Riverdale fame) is a blind woman whose eyesight is ‘taken away’ by a masked attacker. She wakes up to this horrific revelation, and gets taken to a new house where a nurse called Clayton (Lucifer’s Alexander Koch) eases her into her new normal. As their relationship takes a romantic turn, Ellen starts to doubt her reality, as do the viewers. How is it that a blind person with an assistant in an apartment would never ask for a walk outside in the fresh air?
Ellen begins to notice patterns in ambient noises such as sirens that do not feel real. She begins to get blamed for being paranoid. Once Ellen discovers that it’s not just her mind playing games with her, the film broad leaps in its narrative—but by then it is beyond being saved. Things take a drastic turn when Ellen decides to end it once and for all. The issue is not the developments themselves; but the predictability of them all.
Cooper Karl also takes refuge in jump scares to spice up proceedings, but it doesn’t exactly help. There are some feminist undertones too, as you can expect from a film with a female protagonist. Ellen is trapped and gaslighted, and there’s evidence in this story of women camaraderie as well. And yet, these feel like failed attempts to hold your interest. Perhaps if the film didn’t feel so generic, such flavouring might have been more effective.