As Steven Soderbergh’s distinguished career winds down—just one Liberace biopic forthcoming for HBO—it becomes virtually impossible to not reflect on the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s staggeringly diverse, influential body of work. Just in time, he adds “psychological thriller” (or psychiatric?) to his filmography with Side Effects. Unsurprisingly, the substance of a movie genre is again enriched with his latest, masterfully spare and confident effort.
Side Effects’s first act actually unfolds as the heart-wrenching portrait of a young woman, Emily (a fantastic Rooney Mara), whose crippling depression is seemingly re-triggered upon the release of her husband Mark (Channing Tatum) from prison after four years. As Mark attempts to pick up the pieces of their interrupted marriage as well as his professional life, Emily’s condition worsens, prompting her doctor (a never better Jude Law) to try out new drug on her which is still in trials. He also happens to be on the payroll of this particular Big Pharma manufacturer, as a consultant for the new medicine. Of course, this is a Soderbergh movie, so the audience can’t know exactly what’s coming, even if they’ve read the prescribed studio plot summary in advance.
Emily’s condition appears to start improving after the new treatment regimen, but the side effects are quite literally killer. Her sleepwalking is terrifyingly intricate—setting the table for the odd number of three, and preparing food. Mark arrives home one evening to find her cutting veggies, only for her to turn the knife directly into her husband. Someone will have to burn after Emily’s trial—either Emily herself, or her doctor and the prescription’s manufacturer. It’s a sudden and shocking turn of the screw after the audience has invested over 30 minutes close to tears over Emily’s broken emotional state. Her doctor believes she’s not responsible for the murder, but his professional reputation is on the line, threatening not only his employment by the drug manufacturer, but his partnership in his clinic. Law’s character eventually demonstrates more concern for his patient than his career, but he’s not ready to roll over quite yet, because he feels a bit too aggressively targeted by external forces that seem an awful lot like a conspiracy.