Busloads of Christians and repeat business drove "The Passion of the Christ" to a ridiculous box office take, but don't look for blind people to crowd theaters on opening night of Fernando Meirelles' new thriller, "Blindness."

Wait, that wasn't a cheap shot at the blind or a bad joke (I can do better). Rather, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) actually screened the movie and condemned it for portraying the characters -- who are stricken blind by a mysterious plague -- as "monsters."

I just wanted the NFB to know that I'm leading the "Blindness" protest for those with 20/20 vision, not for the same reasons, but simply because it's a laughably bad movie. But together, we can protest in unison and achieve solidarity, crooked picket lines and all.

"Blindness" starts as "28 Days Later" and ends as "The Big Chill." Somewhere in the middle, there is some "Lord of the Flies" mixed in.

Considering these are all solid flicks, you would expect the new artsy thriller from the director of "City of God" to likewise be watchable. But Meirelles' heavy-handed approach, coupled with wooden acting and just a murky overall vision for the film results in audiences laughing and pulling their hats over their eyes during the supposed serious scenes.

"Blindness" begins when an Asian dude (Yusuke Iseya) stops in the middle of traffic in an anonymous city. A stranger (Don McKellar) helps him home, but not before jacking his car keys. And as these characters branch off on their own misadventures, they infect others with blindness in what because a quickly mounting epidemic.

This includes the eye doctor (Mark Ruffalo) who handles patient zero, and his wine-swilling wife, played by Julianne Moore. While wifey seems to be immune to the infection, for reasons which are never explained, she plays blind just to stick by her man. What a trooper.

Soon everyone is holed up in a quarantined facility that looks like a condemned state mental hospital from the '40s. A governmental official explains all the rules on a video monitor that plays in an endless, monotone loop. This monitor, of course, is one of endless stilted metaphors showing how bureaucracy blinds us from truth. How can a blind person watch a TV??!! Yes, we get it.

The filmmakers have all this time to install obvious irony into their film, but what about the little things? Wouldn't hundreds of blind people confined in substandard housing do something about all those loose chairs and tools everyone is tripping on? And why are they always running from the gun-toting, self-proclaimed dictator of their shelter (Gael García Bernal), who has just as much a chance of shooting himself as he does another patient.

When you're blind, gangrene is a worse threat than bullets. And by the time the compound's hallways are treated as bathrooms and the blind prisoners are content to lounge around naked with open wounds -- you're wondering whether Moore's matronly caretaker character wishes she, too, could gouge out her eyes … and nose and mouth. (By the way, if the MTV Movie Awards come up with a scene for "Worst Shower Scene," then "Blindness" wins hands down.)

I usually love post-apocalyptic flicks. There's something so refreshing about thinking of finally having a zero credit card balance … that I don't think about the smelly beards, black market prostitution and cannibalism that will inevitably ensue.

But "Blindness" aims too much for enlightenment and not enough for action, thrills and chills. And even though it goes soft in the end, the movie takes itself way to seriously. And for all its preaching, all we hear and see is a static mess that wants to be noticed.

"Blindness," checking in at 121 minutes, is rated R and is now playing nationwide.

Mike Ward is a Richmond-based writer and editor. Check him at www.underdogcopy.com.