The death toll is mounting mightily as Jorge Ameer’s film “Altered Perceptions” begins. It is a work of fiction, we are reminded, but the disaster seems is not just inspired by the recent pandemic but somehow connected, according to conspiracy theories that pop up, conflating the spate of death, madness and suicide to gays and Blacks and people over 60 who have had a Covid vaccine or booster.
We see it all start slowly, with an artist mixing paint with his own blood, an old man making a mess after asking directions. The blood is flowing liberally before it gets to the desk of a neuroscientist (Matt Fling) — the Fauci of the story — who tries to figure out its cause. His son (Oran Stainbrook), the main character, happens to work for one of the politicians making hay from the disease — a senator played by Danny Freshenfeld who’s got got plans to be president of a new succeeded union.
Besides, “I did solve the Korean peninsula problem,” he says, “so this should be a piece of cake.”
(That’s right, the film begins with an offhand report that Kim Jong Un has given up nuclear development, will unify with South Korea, and sign piece with 34 countries. Things seem to happen just that easily.)
“Altered Perceptions” (certainly not to be confused with Ken Russell’s 1980 “Altered States”) is an apparent first time script from Texas neurologist Wayne C. Dees, who spends a lot of time with speeches about how this dementia could be caused or spread. One of the speakers is played by Lance Guest of “The Last Straighter.”
Stainbrook’s character is suddenly visited by a strange man from the future warning of the coming apocalypse. In the future nobody wears clothes apparently. And “Altered Perceptions” has an awful lot of male nudity (Or that’s my perception).
The grossest bit has to do with the severed head of a prostitute in a seen that is not necessary at all.
Luckily, Ameer doesn’t have the budget to stage two other horrors that are just mentioned – deliberate jet collisions and a vet who torches an animal shelter, which people seem most upset about.
He does manage to lure a couple of willing B-actors into the mix. Always nice to see Eric Roberts in a film — here he’s an old man who’s been hospitalizes and doesn’t recognize his wife (still, he needn’t have thrown her out the window).
Sally Kirkland plays a woman whose husband has been affected. But they’re both involved in the film only briefly.
Things get worse, thanks to politicians who want to overturn elections and cause uprisings that will “make Jan. 6 look like a beauty pageant.”
As you can see, “Altered Perceptions” isn’t exactly subtle in its political jabs. A Florida governor named Ron San Diego declares Florida off limits to homosexual and black communities since their brains are “different than normal Americans.”
Things get so bad over the two hours that it makes you feel a little better about the actual world situation that looks bright by comparison. But that can’t be a good reason to watch.