Critics reviews

Blind is an aesthetically spick-and-span Nordic nightmare, a meditation on loneliness, illness and responsibility. If its effects are a bit sneakier than the wrecking ball to the chest approach of Oslo, August 31, it's due to the meticulousness of its script, and the complex interplay among its many principal characters.

Favourably recalling Polanski's Apartment Trilogy, Blind is a sharp, pleasant surprise that delves into the psyche of a woman reconfiguring her entire way of comprehending the world around her... Vogt slips effortlessly between reality and Ingrid's imaginings, the dizzying trajectory of which is utterly enjoyable to behold.

Vogt's earlier films as a screenwriter, Reprise and Oslo, August 31st, displayed a similar instinct to stylishly explore contemporary alienation, but director Joachim Trier imbued Vogt's scripts with an empathy and thirst for both intellectual and lived experience that Blind lacks.

A startlingly inventive, empathetic thriller from Norwegian first-time director Eskil Vogt. Wielding brilliant sensory technique to convey the first-person perspective of a newly sightless woman, Ingrid, confined to her apartment as her active imagination (or is it that alone?) preys on her, Vogt's exquisite film daringly recalibrates the victim-voyeur dynamic of such woman-in-peril dramas as Gaslight and Wait Until Dark.

When fully contextualised, these characters are what confirms that Blind is not in any way a social realist document, but something more exhilaratingly metaphysical. It's a film about films, espousing the joys of fiction as a way to transport us into exotic locales, to see other worlds and meet other people without ever having to leave the dinky urban prisons we call apartments.

Deftly swishing the t(r)ail of the narrative's many endings and beginnings, Vogt's feature debut eloquently embodies his screenwriting skills as previously witnessed in hushed, attentive collaborations with director Joachim Trier.

Acclaimed by juries in Sundance and Berlin, Blind proves to be an insightful feature debut from a Norwegian director, done with both empathy and skill. By establishing Ingrid as a writer, Vogt adroitly plays with the viewer by telling a story on different levels, creating a meta-narrative with loneliness as the main character.

Teetering on Michel Gondry levels of whimsy, Eskil Vogt manages to pitch his thorny plot with just the right level of humour and pathos. He's a greatly skilled storyteller, whose experience as co-screenwriter in Joachim Trier's Reprise and Oslo, August 31st prove an enviable ability to balance narrative intellect with cerebral intuition. These things all come to play beautifully in Blind, and enable Vogt to flutter capriciously between film genres and tones.

Blind is the feature debut of Eskil Vogt, who co-wrote Reprise and Oslo, August 31st, and here reveals a visual style as sharp and assured as his facility with words... Memorable, thought-provoking, even a little bit heartbreaking, Blind and I Origins represent another kind of Sundance movie—the kind that miraculously turn up just when it feels like over-viewing and under-sleeping might bring on your own blindness.

As much a film about writing and loneliness as about blindness, this standout debut feature for screenwriter Eskil Vogt retains many of the literate, self-reflexive touches Vogt brought to his collaborations with helmer Joachim Trier (chiefly "Reprise") while finding its own alternately droll, sexy, heartbreaking rhythms.