Jessup is a brilliant but - and if this shocks you, you may actually enjoy this picture - dangerously obsessive and completely uncontrollable scientist. He performs sensory deprivation experiments to explore the resulting hallucinations, and he particularly enjoys experimenting on himself, possibly because he knows really smart scientists who are looking to turn into monkeys can really expedite the process by doing weird crap to themselves. He meets Blair Brown’s beautiful Ellie at a party, yammers on about himself and quickly snookers her into sleeping with him. He’s totally self-obsessed, uninterested in her, has creepy out-of-body experiences during sex, and admits to having visions of Christ as a child Naturally, within hours of meeting, Ellie’s in love with Jessup. Women.

A few years later Ellie and Eddie are married and divorced, and he is chilling with indigenous people in Mexico. They cook up what appears to be a lovely bouillabaisse, but looks are deceiving: a couple of drops of Jessup’s blood and this brew takes on hallucinogenic properties. He brings a large jar of the stuff back to his laboratory - no word on how he got it past those tricky customs officials - and starts sucking it down like Coca-Cola. Apparently unsatisfied with the high he’s getting, he decides to combine the magic muck with his sensory deprivation chamber.

That’s where things start to get really wonky and STATES moves away from scientific mystery to drab nerd TRAINSPOTTING slash science-gone-awry monster movie. Somehow, Jessup’s hallucinations start to become reality, and all the fun he thought he was having killing and eating goats at the dawn of time starts catching up with him. Hurt’s Jessup is arrogant and cruel with a nasty tendency to speak really fast when he’s talking about “important science stuff." With a protagonist as unlikable as this one, it’s real tough to involve yourself in the story. Why should I care about a jerk who hurts himself while everyone around him enables his self-destructive tendencies? Making matters worse, the end makes no sense, and I mean NO sense. The parting scene leaves us with (in no particular order) bubbling flesh, weird beings of light, unexplained nudity, and plenty of unanswered questions.

ALTERED STATES teaches us that murder is ok as long as you first turn into a monkey, and taking drugs and performing illegal experiments upon yourself is also ok as long as you are doing so as part of ongoing efforts to turn into a monkey. Basically, monkey good, bubbling flesh and murder less good.