By Robert Scucci
| Published 1 hour ago

Normally I’m not into the kind of psychological thrillers that lean heavily into pharmaceuticals because most filmmakers in this lane don’t do their due diligence. There’s always some plot involving somebody taking what we know in real life to be a mild mood regulator that takes months to titrate into their system, but somehow this leads to a psychotic break that makes absolutely no sense and we’re supposed to just go with it. Going into 2013’s Side Effects, I was expecting more of the same, but that’s not the kind of story writer Scott Burns and director Steven Soderbergh were interested in telling here.

Side Effects does spend some time flirting with pharmaceutical junk science, but it’s in service of a very different story about medical malfeasance, insider trading, and, most importantly, manipulation. The kind where you don’t fully understand who the guilty party is until it’s far too late. Doses are prescribed, symptoms are listed, and lives quietly fall apart before the expected public fallout.

All the usual psychological thriller trappings are present in Side Effects, but instead of drowning the audience in jargon, the film tells a more compelling story about doctor-patient privilege in a broken industry that claims to help people, but causes real harm when the wrong doctors and pharmaceutical companies use their professions to line their pockets.

Don’t Let The Setup Fool You

When we’re first introduced to Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law) in Side Effects, he’s portrayed as a passionate psychiatrist who genuinely wants to do right by his patients. By most measures, he’s an ethical doctor, and his transparency is honestly refreshing compared to what you usually see in this genre. He listens, takes thorough notes, and gives a voice to people who are otherwise dismissed, like the nameless, grieving Haitian patient he encounters early in the film.

The patient is nearly laughed out of the hospital for claiming he saw the ghost of his father driving a taxi cab, but Jonathan understands that the man is grieving and that it’s not uncommon for cultural beliefs to shape how people process loss. It’s a small moment, but an important one that establishes Jonathan’s credibility.

We can’t say the same thing about the woman who becomes his most complicated patient, Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara). Emily is a disgraced socialite following her husband Martin’s (Channing Tatum) four-year prison sentence for insider trading. When Martin is released, Emily begins to spiral, and her suicide attempt by driving her car into a wall brings her into Jonathan’s care.

Jonathan decides to enroll Emily in a paid trial for a new drug called Ablixa, and he’s forthcoming about his involvement in the study and honest about the fact that he’s being compensated. While it initially looks like he’s pushing an experimental antidepressant for personal gain, his reasoning is medically sound. Emily is a strong candidate based on her history, and the medications she previously took lead Jonathan to conclude that Ablixa may actually help her, so he prescribes it.

The problem is that Ablixa causes Emily to start sleepwalking, which leads to her blacking out and stabbing Martin to death. Once this happens, Jonathan’s professional and personal life collapses. He’s scrutinized for allegedly taking kickbacks from the company behind Ablixa, and Emily’s former psychiatrist, Dr. Victoria Siebert (Catherina Zeta-Jones), appears to know far more about Emily’s mental state than she initially lets on.

Let’s Look At All The Moving Parts Here

Side Effects is an interesting watch because it thrives on misdirection. We’re given an honest doctor trying to help a desperate woman using the tools he spent his entire adult life mastering. We’re shown a patient who exhibits all the signs of a psychotic break. And there’s a paper trail pointing directly back to Jonathan for prescribing a drug he supposedly never should have prescribed.

Jonathan also has his own skeletons in his closet from a previous professional entanglement, which leaves him with very little room to defend himself. Martin’s murder destroys his practice, ruins his reputation, and drops him into the center of a media circus that feeds on sensational stories like the one he’s now living through.

By suggesting that we may be dealing with not just one unreliable character, but possibly several, Side Effects avoids becoming the boilerplate psychological thriller I expected. There’s a web of lies so deeply entangled that you never quite know who to trust. Every motive overlaps with another, and every new detail reframes what came before it. Just about every trope you expect from this subgenre is eventually twisted, keeping the mystery alive until the final reveal.

Side Effects does far more than preach the lazy message that psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies are inherently bad. Its story is anchored through a doctor who genuinely cares about his patients, even as he’s occasionally blinded by pressure, ambition, and competing incentives. Jude Law’s ability to walk that line is one of the film’s biggest strengths.

If you’re looking for a high-caliber psychological thriller that keeps you uneasy without insulting your intelligence, Side Effects is streaming on Netflix as of this writing and is absolutely worth your time.