…Perhaps what makes Altered States so awe-inspiring to this day is that very insistence of personal confrontation with faith. It could have wandered into the drawl plot twists of a marriage stumbling on the verge of this man’s sanity, or into why science shouldn’t fool with the unknown, or any number of other pedantic metaphors that fill the screen and bore you to tears with their heavy-handed messages. Instead, what transpires is the story of an unusual couple, led by a man struggling to overcome his unrelenting depths of tragic fear.
William Hurt, Blair Brown, Bob Balaban, Charles Haid, Thaao Penghlis
Directed by Ken Russell. Screenplay by Sidney Aaron. Based on the book by Paddy Chayefsky
