Incannerax What a waste of my time!!!

Libramedi Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Predrag If there is such a thing as genetic memory, than all the phases of human evolution must lie somewhere in our genetic code. What if there was a way we could tap into that stream of information through consciousness? What would we see? What would we learn? Professor Eddie Jessup (William Hurt in his debut role) is intrigued by the data being produced by the use of isolation tanks to induce altered states of consciousness, and decides to undergo the experience himself. What he discovers at first is the ability to relive with total clarity experiences of his childhood. As he continues these experiments, his visions become more acute and filled with religious illusions. Years go by and Jessup has become sedated with the trappings of academia, leaving him unfulfilled and longing for the good old days of experimentation and wonder. He visits a tribe of Mexican Indians that use a hallucinatory drug to evokes a common experience in all users and has the trip of his life! What might he learn inside an isolation tank while being under the influence of this drug? Would he be able to peel away the layers of evolutionary time back to early man and beyond? Perhaps even back to the first thought? I think it's a classic example of the genre & demonstrates that as weird & unlikely as a plot might be it can still come across as convincing genuinely eerie if handled right i.e. good acting, good script, compelling story line & maybe some decent special FX. All to often these days the special FX seem to be put before everything else & as such films of this genre lack substance & usually don't amount to much outside of the box office. For me the special FX in this film still stand up & look good. The trip sequences are extremely surreal & somewhat disturbing in parts but there are some great sequences that definitely start to mess with your head! The only reason this movie still works today is because the movie makes clear that in some tribes, there are substances that are traditionally and successfully used in spiritual rituals, and it is one of these that Hurt uses, in combination with sensory deprivation techniques, to try to get in touch with his own "genetic memory", for lack of a better term.Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

Mr-Fusion "Altered States" goes off the rails in the second half, but for a while there it really felt like it was building toward something good. It plies its trade on the senses as William Hurt's mad scientist takes to the isolation tank (on Mexican shrooms, no less) and the line between real and surreality continues to blur (cue the psychedelic effects). Trying to use mind-expansion to unlock other states of consciousness is where this movie peaks. But then Hurt actually regresses into a caveman and realizes his fall from banging Blair Brown to grunting and snacking on goats. What you hear right there is the sound of a trainwreck. I imagine this twas pretty potent back in 1980 - and a substantial portion of it still is.But it's half of a good movie.5/10

pippolomeo I liked the beginning very much. the story starts to become a bit grotesque at the middle, but I think that for a sci-fi movie from year 1980 this can be acceptable.what really disappointed me is the end, so abrupt and willful to be "romantic" in some sense, but really disrupted all the pathos of the movie, at least for me.the hallucinations are really stunning (although they didn't touch me to the same point of "The devils" my the same director) and the visual effects are really great for the time.a pity that everything is ruined by the last 15 seconds..

Rainey Dawn I liked the movie at the start of the film. The more I watched, the deeper I became engrossed in the story and found it somewhat believable. Then ending came -- I rolled my eyes and laughed -- I could not believe how it ended so dumb! I guess I was expecting a realistic approach to the ending and not a monstrous flop because the rest of the move was almost believable.I know that the movie is loosely based on Dr. John Lilly's real life experiments from the 1960's - and that is why a plausible ending to the movie should have been scripted. Altered States needs an altered ending.If there is a ever a remake of this film or a completely different version of Dr. John Lilly's experiments made - then I will implore the scriptwriters to create a realistic approach to the ending - Altered States had a terrible ending.A humorous ending: Watch the ending of the 1980 Altered States then watch about the last 30 seconds of the old MTV video of A-ha's "Take On Me" --- was A-ha thinking of the movie Altered States when making this video?! Apparently so! LOL 6/10