Altered Reality (2024)

In Altered Reality, the reality that is altered is only the movie’s artificial reality, a tongue-in-cheek noir melodrama thriller, with time travel and “Jack” (Lance Henriksen), who is kind of a science fiction ghost, living outside time as we understand it. For him it’s a flat circle. I think that’s how Billy Pilgrim tried to describe it too? Jack is likewise unstuck in time (not the movie’s term). Then there are the noir folks, starting with the Cook family, Oliver (Charles Agron) and Caroline (Alyona Khmara) and a young daughter who disappears tout de suite. Tragic. There’s a whole drippy sentimental thing about how the Cook family goes to a park called Spring Manor twice a year. That’s where Jack hangs out and Oliver often goes looking for him when he’s there. Jack is like an old family friend to Oliver. Oliver doesn’t understand why Jack doesn’t age. Spring Manor is where the daughter disappeared. There’s also Oliver’s business manager, Cooper Mason (Tobin Bell), and the femme fatale he picks up—or more like picks him up—Alex Parker (Krista Dane King). She is a very sexy and terrible person. I liked the gently mocking tone enough to stick around but I was honestly expecting something a lot more trippy given the title, something more like Brainstorm maybe. I kept waiting for the reality to alter, but the only things that changed were history as per certain time travel story rules, though admittedly it’s an impressive plot point. Henriksen is great as a grizzled seen-it-all eternal being—hits all the right notes. Agron is good too playing tormented good-guy Oliver with a certain gullibility. I spent part of his scenes wondering if that was actually his forehead or a prosthetic. He is a great genius, you see. The details are there to be discovered—the picture has some neat surprises. I definitely got some Alfred Hitchcock vibe circa Vertigo out of this. The music by Andrew Morgan Smith seemed to be going for something like that or even Psycho in some of the duller patches. The movie is not boring—the dull patches are like the dull patches in many noirs. They occupy space. Sometimes they add to the suspense. You sit there and watch. I cannot recommend Altered Reality whole-heartedly but it’s an interesting curiosity, somewhat reminiscent of Choose Me.