Best movies like Altered States

A dream is the key that unlocks the mysteries of the waking world.

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Altered States Starring William Hurt, Blair Brown, Bob Balaban, Charles Haid, and more. If you liked Altered States then you may also like: Pi, X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, Zardoz, Videodrome, The Wave and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

A research scientist explores the boundaries and frontiers of consciousness. Using sensory deprivation and hallucinogenic mixtures from native American shamans, he explores these altered states of consciousness and finds that memory, time, and perhaps reality itself are states of mind.

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Pi

A mathematical genius discovers a link between numbers and reality, and thus believes he can predict the future.

X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes

A doctor uses special eye drops to give himself x-ray vision, but the new power has disastrous consequences.

Zardoz

In the far future, a savage trained only to kill finds a way into the community of bored immortals that alone preserves humanity's achievements.

Videodrome

As the president of a trashy TV channel, Max Renn is desperate for new programming to attract viewers. When he happens upon "Videodrome," a TV show dedicated to gratuitous torture and punishment, Max sees a potential hit and broadcasts the show on his channel. However, after his girlfriend auditions for the show and never returns, Max investigates the truth behind Videodrome and discovers that the graphic violence may not be as fake as he thought.

The Wave

A man on the verge of a promotion takes a mysterious hallucinogenic drug that begins to tear down his reality and expose his life for what it really is.

The Jacket

A military veteran goes on a journey into the future, where he can foresee his death and is left with questions that could save his life and those he loves.

The Kindred

Amanda's deathbed request to her son, John, was for him to destroy all the lab notes etc. from her last experiment. She also blurts out he had a brother. At the funeral John meets Melissa, who claims to be his mother's biggest fan. Together with some of John's friends they go to Amanda's house, but none are prepared for what they find there.

The Addiction

A vampiric doctoral student tries to follow the philosophy of a nocturnal comrade and control her thirst for blood.

Annihilation

A biologist signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition into a mysterious zone where the laws of nature don't apply.

Beyond the Black Rainbow

Deep within the mysterious Arboria Institute, a disturbed and beautiful girl is held captive by a doctor in search of inner peace. Her mind controlled by a sinister technology. Silently, she waits for her next session with deranged therapist Dr. Barry Nyle. If she hopes to escape, she must journey through the darkest reaches of The Institute, but Nyle wonʼt easily part with his most gifted and dangerous creation.

The Brood

A man tries to uncover an unconventional psychologist's therapy techniques on his institutionalized wife, while a series of brutal attacks committed by a brood of mutant children coincides with the husband's investigation.

Bug

In Oklahoma, Agnes, a lonely waitress living in an isolated and dilapidated roadside motel, meets Peter, a quiet and mysterious man with whom she establishes a peculiar relationship.

Chappaqua

Semi-autobiographical story of Conrad Rooks, who travels to France to undergo a drug-withdrawal cure. Flashbacks to the beginings of psychedelia in San Fran. Though initially confusing, as Rooks blends drug-illusion with reality, and cuts color with black-and-white and monochrome tinted shots, "Chappaqua" is conventionally constructed with a beginning, middle, and end.

Dark City

A man struggles with memories of his past, including a wife he cannot remember, in a nightmarish world with no sun and run by beings with telekinetic powers who seek the souls of humans.

Eraserhead

First time father Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

A shipwrecked sailor stumbles upon a mysterious island and is shocked to discover that a brilliant scientist and his lab assistant have found a way to combine human and animal DNA—with horrific results.

A Scanner Darkly

An undercover cop in a not-too-distant future becomes involved with a dangerous new drug and begins to lose his own identity as a result.

Friend of the World

After a catastrophic global war, a young filmmaker awakens in the carnage and seeks refuge in the only other survivor: an eccentric, ideologically opposed figure of the United States military. Together, they brave the toxic landscape in search of safety... and answers.

From Beyond

A group of scientists have developed the Resonator, a machine which allows whoever is within range to see beyond normal perceptible reality. But when the experiment succeeds, they are immediately attacked by terrible life forms.

Forbidden World

In the distant future, a federation marshal arrives at a research lab on a remote planet where a genetic experiment has gotten loose and begins feeding on the dwindling scientific group.

The Trip

After his wife leaves him, a disillusioned director dives into the drug scene, trying anything his friend suggests.

A Field in England

During the Civil War in 17th-Century England, a small group of deserters flee from a raging battle through an overgrown field. They are captured by an alchemist, who forces the group to aid him in his search to find a hidden treasure that he believes is buried in the field. Crossing a vast mushroom circle, which provides their first meal, the group quickly descend into a chaos of arguments, fighting and paranoia, and, as it becomes clear that the treasure might be something other than gold, they slowly become victim to the terrifying energies trapped inside the field.

Higher Power

When the Universe decides what it wants, it's pointless to resist. With his family's life at stake, Joseph Steadman finds himself the unwilling test subject of a maniacal scientist in a battle that could save the world – or destroy it.

eXistenZ

A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged.

Splice

Elsa and Clive, two young rebellious scientists, defy legal and ethical boundaries and forge ahead with a dangerous experiment: splicing together human and animal DNA to create a new organism. Named "Dren", the creature rapidly develops from a deformed female infant into a beautiful but dangerous winged human-chimera, who forges a bond with both of her creators - only to have that bond turn deadly.

Flatliners

Five medical students want to find out if there is life after death. They plan to stop one of their hearts for a few seconds, thus simulating death, and then bring the person back to life.

Brainstorm

Two brilliant research scientists have invented a device capable of recording and playing back sensory experiences only to have devastating results when one of them records their own death.

The Fly

When Seth Brundle makes a huge scientific and technological breakthrough in teleportation, he decides to test it on himself. Unbeknownst to him, a common housefly manages to get inside the device and the two become one.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

A ship-wrecked man floats ashore on an island in the Pacific Ocean. The island is inhabited by a scientist, Dr. Moreau, who in an experiment has turned beasts into human beings.

Horror

This visually arresting chiller concerns a group of runaway teens that escape from a drug rehab and encounter demonic forces in a rural farmhouse.

Ice Spiders

When a young ski team training for the Olympics arrives at the remote and isolated Lost Mountain Ski Resort to focus on training, they're thrilled to find a retired Olympic skier is there to help them train. But their plans are halted when a scientist working at a nearby government lab arrives with the horrifying news that a top secret Government project has produced giant spiders and they have escaped, killing and eating everything in sight.

Immortal

In the distant future, Earth is occupied by ancient gods and genetically altered humans. When a god is sentenced to death he seeks a new human host and a woman to bear his child.

Island of Lost Souls

An obsessed scientist conducts profane experiments in evolution, eventually establishing himself as the self-styled demigod to a race of mutated, half-human abominations.

Man's Best Friend

A dog turns from man's best friend into man's worst nightmare as he attacks everything that moves.

The Manitou

A psychic's girlfriend finds out that a lump on her back is a growing reincarnation of a 400 year-old demonic Native American spirit.

One Point O

Paranoid computer programmer Simon wakes up to find a package in his room one day. Despite attempts at securing his apartment, the packages keep arriving. While cameras watch Simon's every move, he struggles to find the answers to the mysterious forces taking over his life.

The Cell

A psychotherapist journeys inside a comatose serial killer in the hopes of saving his latest victim.

Extracted

Thomas Jacobs invents a way to watch people's memories from the inside. Going against his morals, he accepts an offer to enter a heroin addict's memories to literally see if he committed a crime. However,a malfunction causes his consciousness to become trapped inside the criminal's mind. He remains a prisoner in the addict's memories for more than four years until he discovers the possibility of escape.

Armed Response

The story follows a team of highly trained operatives who find themselves trapped inside an isolated military compound.

Possible Worlds

The same man lives out several parallel lives in different "worlds" and in different relationships at the same time.

Lapse

Renee wakes up one morning in the middle of the desert with blood on her hands. She cannot remember why she is there, how she got there or with whom she came. Her quest to uncover forgotten events leads her on a journey of discovery where reality and memory collide and people are not what they seem.

Brain Dead

In a battle of man versus machine, Martin, a top neurosurgeon who's studying brain malfunctions that cause mental illness, delves deep into his own mind to save himself from a megalomaniacal corporation.

Metamorphosis

A geneticists working on a drug to stop ageing tries it upon himself with horrendous consequences.

Reflections of Evil

Julie, a teen who died from a PCP overdose in the early '70s, searches from beyond the grave for her younger brother Bob, who now in the '90s is an obese watch seller suffering with sucrose intolerance.

Mosquito Man

Police lieutenant detective Thomas 'Thom' Randall's steady girl-friend, Dr. Jennifer 'Jen' Allen, is Dr. Aaron Michaels's main assistant on his pharmaceutical firm Bellion's research program to cure the highly contagious, fatal infection Guinin. A convicted murderer, whom Thom arrested, is one of their special drug test subjects, but escapes. The convict and Jen are affected by radioactively altered DNA from an experimental reactor used on mosquitoes which transfer quinine. The convict soon mutates into a mosquito-like monster, which sucks its victims dry. By the time Thom and his junior murder brigade partner Charlie Morrison figure out what happens, Jen starts mutating herself.

The Ganzfeld Haunting

In a world where past meets present and the present gets lost in time, reality is blurred for 5 College psychology students who are pushing all boundaries during an ESP experiment over a lost weekend...

Shadow Puppets

Director Michael Winnick's chilling tale stars James Marsters as Jack, one of eight captives who awaken in an abandoned asylum not knowing who they are or why they are together. They discover that they've been used in an experiment to erase disturbing memories, but instead, a murderous creature has been unleashed. Reaching out from the shadows, the monster hunts the eight strangers as they race to escape the asylum.

Infested

Horror tale of insects which eat their victims from the inside out.

Sequence Break

A surreal sci-fi romance wherein a beautiful young woman and strange metaphysical forces threaten the reality of a reclusive video arcade technician, resulting in bizarre biomechanical mutations and a shocking self-realization.

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