Dir: Giles Walker
Star: Nastassja Kinski, Stewart Bick, Victoria Snow, Jack Langedijk

Susan (Kinski) appears to have everything necessary for a great live: a successful career as an environmental designer in Chicago, and a loving husband, Alan. However, a trip to the store in a thunderstorm, for an anniversary bottle of wine, ends in tragedy for the couple as he is hit and killed by a car. Distraught, Susan throws herself wholeheartedly into her work for several years. Seeking to bring Susan out of this shell, her associate in the design company, Peggy (Snow), introduces Susan to Kevin Markson (Bick), a financial adviser who is also clever, handsome and funny – a perfect match, in fact. The pair begin a whirlwind relationship, leading to a rapid marriage after they fly down to Las Vegas for the weekend. And that’s where the problems begin.

For it isn’t long before strange things start happening: a woman, wearing a hat and dark glasses, seems to be following Susan and watching her apartment. Cryptic but threatening messages are left at her office, and things continue to escalate, with crude graffiti being scrawled, calling her a “whore” and their apartment being broken into. After the police are brought in, Kevin eventually confesses that he thinks he knows who is responsible: he had a brief dalliance with a woman he met in a bar, Leslie Seeward, and when they split up, she vowed that she would kill any other woman whom he married. She appears to be making good on the threat, and only the fortunate presence of a cemetery worker saves Susan from worse than bruising after an attack by her mother’s grave.

But Leslie also seems to be completely elusive, and even the private detective Susan hires is, at least initially, unable to make progress, as the address Kevin had for Leslie appears to be a complete dead end, with nobody knowing her there. Is Kevin telling the truth? If not, who is behind it all? Potential candidates include Peggy, as well as Justine, Susan’s younger sister; the two have a strained relationship, because by the terms of their parents’ will, Susan controls the trust fund income Justine gets. That’s a direct result of Justine’s husband being a low-life slimeball with some bad, money-burning habits, so perhaps he’s involved too? You won’t find out the truth until right at the end and… Well, I can’t honestly say I was particularly convinced by the resolution. I guess, in some ways, it “makes sense”, as long as you have a fairly loose definition of what constitutes sense.

Fragments of this reminded me of The Intruder, though that obviously has a significantly different backstory. But both are Canadian productions (Montreal standing in for “Chicago” here), and with Kinski playing a woman who may (or may not) be being stalked by an old flame of her current man. Though for some reason, I thought this actually had Kinski playing a woman who couldn’t see, so it was a bit of a surprise the whole “Blind” part of the title proves almost entirely irrelevant. I think I was perhaps confusing it with another film of the same name (at least, in the United Kingdom), starring Mia Farrow as the sightless victim of a psychotic killer. But given the tagline used on the DVD sleeve here is “Open your eyes to the terror,” I feel any resulting optic-based confusion is at least not all my fault. That matters particularly here, because this is the first Nastassja movie reviewed for the site, on which I had to spend actual money: between my existing film collection and what should be left in vague terms as “the usual sources,” I’d managed to watch everything else to this point. However, both came up short, though I was able to use an Amazon gift-card, and picked this up for less than five bucks, including shipping.

On balance, that’s likely a bit much, considering there is not much here that will merit repeat viewing: the main hook is wondering who is behind the increasingly more-violent attacks on Susan, and if you know that going in, the appeal would be sharply diminished. The performances are nothing special to write home about: Bick is particularly bland, to the extent that I can’t even remember what he looks like, and I only watched the film two days ago. Possibly the best is Gordon Pinsent as Martin Howell, the PI engaged by Susan; while he doesn’t have much screen-time, he manages to do a lot more with it, in terms of creating a character, than you’d expect. Kinski is okay. She has a vulnerable quality that is appropriate and effective for the part, yet Susan remains a cypher. I kept expecting the whole “loss of her husband” thing to be revisited, and turn into something much more significant in storyline terms, than it ever ends up being – such as the attacker being the vengeful spirit of her dead first husband. No such luck. Turns out to be nothing more than an easy ploy for cheap sympathy.

The limitations of the TV movie genre also restrict this, in terms of the passion and intensity which can be displayed here. This stands out particularly during the cemetery “attack” – quotes used advisedly, since it has to be one of the weakest excuses I’ve seen, in terms of the threat it poses to the heroine. This is an ongoing issue: you rarely get the sense that Susan is genuinely in peril, except perhaps during the final sequence, and even there your attention is diverted by the revelation of the attacker’s identity, with the resulting strain that puts on your disbelief. I suppose, as TVM’s go, these issues are more or less par for the course, but I didn’t actually know that was the provenance here, any more than I knew Kinski’s character could see. You can make a case that any resulting disappointment is my responsibility, for having nurtured unrealistic expectations, and I probably wouldn’t argue. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though.