Wayne Winterstein’s ‘Blinded’ slips into familiar territory – online love, generational tension, digital deception – but instead of preaching or pitying, it stares straight into the void where grief, longing, and denial sit quietly.
Reggie Ridgway delivers a performance so stripped-down it barely feels like acting. He’s the widowed father, adrift in the quiet wreckage of a life once full. Days drag. Meals for one. Too much stillness. Then comes Patience. Young. Beautiful. From Ghana. A light in the dark. She makes him smile again. Maybe even feel alive again. But the screen doesn’t hug back, and his son – played by Matthew Shultis – isn’t buying the fantasy.
This isn’t a cautionary tale about Nigerian princes or broken English promises. ‘Blinded’ is smarter than that. It’s about the unbearable sweetness of being seen after you’ve been invisible for too long. It’s about how love – or the idea of it – can become a hallucination we willingly overdose on.
Farida Rennie, as Patience, walks a tightrope of ambiguity – one moment disarming, the next unreadable. Ruben Robles’ cinematography avoids melodrama, favoring stillness.
What’s most impressive is the script’s refusal to resolve. There’s no no moral hammer. Just a lingering question: is being scammed worse than being alone?
‘Blinded’ is compact, compassionate, and quietly brutal. It leaves you staring at your phone a little differently. Winterstein doesn’t hammer the point – he threads it through the uneasy space where truth and desire blur.
