An ophthalmologist (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife (Julianne Moore) are quarantined together when a strange epidemic breaks out in Blindness.

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The premise for the horror movie Blindness is a good one:

An unexplained epidemic that leaves its victims blind spreads quickly among the population. To prevent the epidemic’s spread, victims are quarantined in hospital wards.

One of the first victims, an ophthalmologist (Mark Ruffalo) who caught the disease after treating a Japanese man who was its first victim, is warehoused in a spartan ward along with a few of the other early victims. His wife (Julianne Moore) who, for some unexplained reason still has her sight pretends she has gone blind so she can be with her husband.

Although Blindness begins eerily enough, it quickly devolves into an apocalyptic horror of violence and degradation. It is, perhaps, one of the most unpleasant films you are ever likely to see.

The government doesn’t do much more than have boxes of food delivered by a staff that’s afraid to enter the wards for fear of contracting the disease. Soldiers carrying guns and wearing face masks stand on the high walls surrounding the building, shooting down anyone who makes a misstep. The inmates are pretty much left on their own.

The floors are soon littered with trash. There’s not enough soap or food. The leader of one of the three wards declares himself king. With his cohorts, they grab all the food boxes and announce they will parcel them out to the other wards if they are paid tribute — money, jewelry, electronic gear. When the other wards run out of loot to pay for food, the king announces that the other wards must deliver their women to Ward 3 for sex.

Blindness, which was filmed in Canada, Brazil and Uruguay, is based on a book by Jose Saramago. Under the direction of Fernando Meirelles it grows increasingly bleak as it goes on, not helped by the fact that it is shot in washed-out colors, which are mostly blacks and blues and grays, nor that many of the scenes are filmed in shadow.

One wonders early on why Moore’s doctor’s wife doesn’t announce that she can see. Perhaps a scientist could have used her to find a cure for the blindness, which leaves its victims seeing a bright white light rather than being left in darkness. Neither she nor her husband have considered this apparently.

Moore and Ruffalo’s characters become increasingly distant from each other the longer they are quarantined. He begins to resent her sight and her constant attempts to help him, sending him into the arms of a high-priced prostitute who is blind. There are a lot of flare ups between the prisoners that spark dramatic moments, too. Yet by the time the two-hour Blindness is only at the halfway point, you might want to close your eyes.

*Blindness

Starring: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Alice Braga, Danny Glover.

Rated: R, contains violence, sex, nudity, profanity.

mjanuson@projo.com