Synopsis for
Blindness (2008) More at IMDbPro »

The film starts out with a plague of white blindness that is spreading throughout a city at a pretty rapid pace. Its different from regular blindness, in the fact that the blind person usually sees nothing but black; while these infected people see white, milky nothingness instead. Fearing that this strange plague is highly contagious; the government panics and begins sending infected people to a quarantine zone that happens to be inside of an old, abandoned mental hospital with three wards. It is, in fact, contagious; as we see the blindness spread from a single, random person to a guy that helps him and then steals his car, to an eye doctor (Ruffalo) and then to all of his patients. The only person who seems immune to this outbreak is the eye doctors wife (Moore), who accompanies him to the quarantine facility- lying about her condition. The old sanitarium turns out to be a cramped, squalid hellhole and the more people that are brought in, the more problems start to occur. The place doesnt have fresh water, no outside communication and no emergency medical supplies. The soldiers outside of the place, are heavily armed and very cruel and will kill rather than help anyone. Soon all three wards are cramped full to capacity and urine and feces cover the floors of the hallways. Food is brought in by boxes daily and left to the inmates to decide how to ration it properly. Soon each ward has a selected leader who will speak for them and handle problems diplomatically. However; in ward three a sadistic plot is being hatched by a former bartender, who is now the self imposed King of the ward (Bernal, in an astonishingly evil role) and an accountant (Chaykin), who can read Braille because hes been blind his whole life. They have a gun and arent afraid to use it and as the days pass by, they take complete control of the entire facility and most importantly, the food. At first, they demand valuables (like jewelry and watches) in exchange for food, but when all of that runs out- they demand the women. This leads to an intensely cruel sequence where all of the women are sexually assaulted by the men in ward three and one is even killed by her assailant. The time comes when something must be done to stop the savagery and the others have to use their only trump card- the doctors wife, who can still see. She kills the king and starts a war, which results in a fire that consumes the entire facility, killing all of ward threes occupants. The doctor and a handful of survivors, led by the wife, escape the quarantine grounds; only to find the entire city in a state of complete upheaval- everyone is blind. She leads them all back to the home of her and her husband; where they start planning a new life. The film ends with the first man who was afflicted by the plague, regaining his sight and then a wide shot of the city skyline- implying that everything returns to normal.