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Side Effects Movie Review

Side Effects is a 2013 psychological thriller film directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Jude Law and Rooney Mara. It’s an initially effective, but ultimately messy thriller.

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“Depression is an inability to construct a future“

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When Emily’s problems continue to haunt her, psychiatrist Jonathan Banks prescribes her a new drug. What follows not only leads to her husband’s murder, but also threatens to ruin Jonathan’s career. At first, this film was all about the evils of the pharmaceutical companies and doctors who prescribe possibly dangerous medicine to their patients. In an era where Pfizer took an almost spiritual quality in the Western world, this film is now even more important than back when it was released.

But unfortunately, the second half is where all of it came crumbling down to ashes, in particular in that very unfortunate third act. This film is a great case against twists and convoluted narratives in movies as Side Effects could have been a terrific, minimalist thriller flick that does what it sets out to do brilliantly and nothing else, but Soderbergh had to include additional twists to entice the viewers, but he only ended up frustrating most of them.

Jude Law is excellent in the main role of Dr. Jonathan Banks. He is believable and charismatic as always. Rooney Mara is also very well cast and she excelled at playing both the more innocent and the more sinister side of her character. Channing Tatum got a very small role whereas Catherine Zeta-Jones was ominous as the most villainous character in the film.

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Side Effects is well shot, edited and directed. The dialogue is consistently strong and the plot is at first minimalist, suspenseful and thematically relevant. The first half resembled an almost Hitchcockian level of thriller filmmaking. But that third act destroyed everything that came before with a ridiculous conclusion and some mediocre turns that made no sense.