Altered States

This movie has some incredible camera work and a distinct, eye-catching visual style. There, I’ve gotten the compliments out of the way. Now I’m gonna tear this movie apart. Altered States is, ostensibly, about a psychopathologist studying schizophrenia. He becomes convinced that different states of mind are not merely mental health issues, but genuine states of reality, doors and windows to other parts of reality, and that those doors can be opened by anyone with the right key. What he finds as he continues his experiments is the basis for this movie’s “horror” aspect. So, first off, this movie is at constant conflict with itself in the weirdest way. On the directorial side, it is serious and experimental and artistic, but the script is so ridiculous as to border on accidental satire. It feels like director Ken Russell wanted to try and remake Exorcist II, but directed it and told the actors to play it straight. The result is a movie too discordant to reconcile its own parts into a cohesive whole. The no-nonsense (almost hyper-serious) direction is constantly grounding a plot that wants to be a kaleidoscope of insanity. This is the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, in the worst possible way. Now, add into this a story that stretches itself, to an almost ludicrous degree, to sound intelligent, but is constantly betrayed by itself. Early on, the movie brings up that part of the protagonist’s drive is based on religion. To call it poorly explained would be generous. The movie pretty much days “RELIGION AIN’T IT MYSTERIOUS?”, chucks some quick-cut Christian imagery into a hallucination scene, and then drops it for the rest of the movie. Mind you, this is a guy who, mid-coitus, stops himself because he looks into a lamp and starts thinking about the Crucifixion. Why is religion so important? Something something his dad something, let’s move on. That’s literally how the movie treats it. Why bring it up then? Why bring up the dad too, when this is the only mention of him in the movie? Why is does his quest pivot from unlocking the human mind to other states of being, and then becomes a body horror/genetic mutation story? Altered States has a hundred different ideas, and if it picked one or two, it could work. But this kitchen-sink approach leaves the movie feeling aimless, and it can’t afford that when the dialogue is as pretentious as a New Yorker article read aloud by Gwyneth Paltrow and Jared Leto. But on top of that, you’ve also got how this movie is all style and no substance. Why does the protagonist even care about this quixotic quest of his to … do … something? We know what he’s doing (kind of, sort of), and we know he becomes obsessed with solving the puzzle, but why did this interest him to begin with? And why does it keep hold on him? Don’t bother looking for answers, because this movie won’t provide them. Same with how his wife falls madly, addictively in love with him, despite his being borderline insane, emotionally unavailable, preachy, pompous, and aloof. He has zero discernibly positive qualities, but for some reason, she is hypnotized by his total lack of charms. Again, why? You won’t get an answer. This movie doesn’t provide motivations for anything. Things happen. Deal with it. That’s how this movie operates. It’s like finding out the Sydney Opera House is really a vacant former KMart; this gorgeous, mesmerizing outer shell, and inside, a total vacuum. That may be the worst part about this movie; for all its high-minded, flowery language, for all its attempts to make the ethereal coalesce, for all its proclaimed search for the truth of humanity and God, the movie has no soul, no heartbeat, no nothing at its core. Its supposed profundity and philosophy are hollow and meaningless, and when that’s all the movie has, that leaves the movie a fraud. This is Chaucer writing for fortune cookies, or Whitman writing greeting cards. This is every poem you wrote as a teenager turned into a movie. And then, when it finally drags its own corpse over the finish line, the ending is so insulting given what the movie has been saying for 100 minutes, it’s infuriating enough to ruin any good will this movie might’ve accidentally stumbled into. Save yourself the aggravation of being mansplained dollar-story philosophy by a movie that’s the living embodiment of the jackass on Twitter who likes to “WELL ACKSHUALLY” everybody. This movie has nothing to say, and will waste a great deal of your time trying to prove otherwise.