New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Yes, it sounds like something Alex Jones would come up with after overdosing on Oliver Stone’s homemade banana bread.

But as I suggested earlier, Chayefsky’s words plus a pair of powerful performances by Hurt and Brown equal what you’d get if Aaron Sorkin ever decided to write a Star Trek episode. I’ve never been so captivated by technobabble as I was during Altered States, in part because it’s technobabble sprinkled with clever sounding ruminations on death, the meaning of life, and humanity’s connection to (or lack thereof) to God.

That might be cool, if it weren’t ultimately superfluous to the plot. The Christ imagery abruptly disappears early on which is jarring, but my guess is that it served surrogate to Eddie’s later devotion to his life’s work. Fine, but it feels excessive in light of how verbose the script is on this issue, and the intensity of Hurt’s performance. I suppose some of this might be put at the feet of director Ken Russell, who could well teach Madonna a thing or two about the fetishization of religious imagery.

As far as the body horror goes, Eddie’s attempts to dabble with the nuts and bolts of his DNA begin to trigger some horrifying things. The sequences where Eddie “regresses” are not, as I said, the focus of the film. They are profoundly disturbing and immersive though, in part because the visual effects and prosthetics are outstanding. The sequences where Eddie is hallucinating/transforming are some of the most arresting imagery I’ve ever seen, and I should throw in that the Oscar this movie won for sound editing is as well deserved an award as any ever given.

That’s a lot of praise, I know. So let me bring it down a notch. The primary issue I have with Altered States is that for all the time it spends pushing all that religious iconography early on, it abandons it in favor of earnestly peddling enough epistemological mumbo-jumbo to make Ayn Rand’s head explode. Then it chucks that out the window too, at (arguably) the most important point of the movie (the end) in favor of something else. Yes, it’s still consistent with the movie’s themes, but it’s also a bit like tying only half the threads together and calling it a blanket.

I DO love it when a film draws you in to the point where you forget what it’s really about and then WHAM, it hits you in the face right at the end. But this time it feels abrupt, incomplete and perhaps even a wee bit unearned. And that’s no small thing, considering how invested I’d become.

But don’t let this scare you away. Even if you don’t love horror there’s a lot to like about Altered States. It’s filled with astonishing visuals, powerful performances and spellbinding soundscapes. Despite not quite succeeding on every level, it remains an unforgettable collage of the frightening, fascinating and far-out.

Continued:       1       2