Altered States
- sombre
- brisk
- extreme
- surreal
Sombre, kinetic, extreme sci-fi / horror, surreal in texture. Ambivalent, mid-stakes, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.
How every film is hand-scored →A research scientist explores the boundaries and frontiers of human consciousness. Using sensory deprivation and hallucinogenic mixtures from Native American shamans, he explores these altered states of cognizance and finds that memory, time, and reality itself are states of mind.
Our read · Altered States (1980) reads as a sombre, kinetic, surreal sci-fi · horror · psychedelic entry — extreme in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.
Availability in the UK · via JustWatch
More info & search links
The shape of Altered States
What watching it is actually like.
“You want Ken Russell psychedelic body horror about consciousness pushed past breaking.”
Skip it tonight — Skip if transformation gore, nudity, or strobing trips will wreck you.
The reading.
Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.
Eight films that read most like this one.
Closeness in the twelve-axis space — how the film actually reads, not “people also liked.”
Discussion
What does your Movie DNA look like?
Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.
Calibrate yourself