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Critics Consensus: Extraordinarily daring for a Hollywood film, Altered States attacks the viewer with its inventive, aggressive mix of muddled sound effects and visual pyrotechnics.
Critic Consensus: Extraordinarily daring for a Hollywood film, Altered States attacks the viewer with its inventive, aggressive mix of muddled sound effects and visual pyrotechnics.
All Critics (43) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (37) | Rotten (6) | DVD (4)
It opens at fever pitch and then starts soaring -- into genetic fantasy, into a precognitive dream of delirium and delight.
Direction by Ken Russell has energy to spare, with appropriate match-up of his baroque visual style to special effects intensive material.
There isn't a lucid moment in it (and much of the dialogue is rendered unintelligible by Russell's subversive direction), but it has dash, style, and good looks, as well as the funniest curtain line since Some Like It Hot.
[Director] Russell's noisily grandiose swipe at psychedelia embellishes what is no more than the cosily familiar story of the obsessive Scientist Who Goes Too Far and Unwittingly Unleashes, etc.
I was overwhelmed, I was caught up in its headlong energy.
Dependably -- even exhilaratingly -- bizarre. Its strangeness, which borders cheerfully on the ridiculous, is its most enjoyable feature.
A sensationalist head-trip, swirling us up in one man's desire to resurrect his "more primitive self," Altered States remains luridly intense.
It's got Russell's trademark eccentricity (read: slight bonkers-ness) all over it, which you may take as a warning or a recommendation.
Russell's razzle-dazzle hallucinogenic style certainly hits bullseye.
Like much of Russell's work, Altered States is ostentatious and pretentious yet genuinely engaged with ideas and style.
No character -- including William Hurt in the central role -- is even vaguely likable, and the mawkish ending is a laugh. In the Russell tradition, there are brilliant flashes on an overwrought trip to nowhere.
It's by turns pseudo-analytical head-twister and skull-pounding monster romp, including glorious whip-crack dialogue.
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Super Reviewer
I was a little overwhelmed with all the scientific mumbo-jumbo at first but once I got an idea of what was going on I found this to be a very interesting and surprisingly creepy experience. It's quite Cronenberg-esque and reminded me of "The Fly" in some ways. Great performance too by William Hurt in his debut and Dick Smith worked his grotesque magic with the special make-up effects. Give this one a watch!
They might as well have called this "The Trip 2", like The Trip, this movie's character goes on a strange journey after doing weird experiments on himself. It's really hard to watch, and I couldn't hardly stand it. I don't recommend seeing this movie.
Not one of my favorite Russell films, but interesting. I'm tempted to read the source material (novel by Paddy Chayefsky) as I feel that at the core of this film is an incredibly deep premise that might be better "fleshed out" in the novel. I feel that much the more interesting concepts are lost / overshadowed by the psychedelia that predominates the film. Much of which seems horribly dated at this point. I was lucky enough recently to take part in a Q & A session with Ken Russell and he told an ammusing story of how when this film was playing in theaters it developed a large following of college students who would (he says) buy their tickets and wait in the lobby or outside the theater (getting high) until they got the signal from one of their friends inside that there was another hallucination scene starting. At which point they'd all run back in to watch those scenes only to step back into the lobby / outside when the "trip" was over. He found that quite amusing and (after watching this film) it's a story that I totally believe.
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