10. Julia's Eyes
Original Title: Los Ojos de Julia Nobody has been more responsible for the international popularity of modern Spanish horror than Mexican writer-director-producer Guillermo del Toro. Del Toro's name attached to a film is seen as a sign of something worth seeing, a mark of quality. That's why his name is bigger than any other on the poster to this, Guillem Morales' blindness themed stalker movie, which he produced. The real star of the show, though, is Belen Rueda as the eponymous Julia, a woman losing her sight through a genetic degenerative eye disorder as she investigates the mystery of the death of her twin sister who had the same condition. Rueda conveys real fear, whilst also seeming more of a rounded character than a simple woman in peril. The film's stalker mystery is pure hokum, but there's genuine tension in both the likelihood of sudden blindness at the worst possible moment and the contrast between the sighted and the sightless. In fact, the film's creepiest scene comes when the still sighted Julia tries to listen in on a group of blind women in a locker room. As the women literally smell her out they notice, sightlessly, that she didn't come in alone. It's a great moment and one that, unfortunately, the climax of the film fails to match.
See this if you liked: The tension of a blind woman threatened by sighted criminals was also utilised to good effect in the classic Audrey Hepburn thriller Wait Until Dark. On the trashier end of the spectrum, slasher See No Evil saw a blind Mia Farrow stalked by a maniac killer.