Side Effects Review

Director: Steven Soderbergh.

Starring: Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Channing Tatum.

Running Time: 106 minutes.

Certificate: 15.

Synopsis: Martin (Channing Tatum) has just been released from prison, much to the delight of his wife, Emily (Rooney Mara). So why is she so depressed, and just what effect is the medication prescribed to her by Dr. Banks (Jude Law) having?

In recent years, Steven Soderbergh has pumped out a veritable wave of films, but none have quite reached the heights of his earlier work. SIDE EFFECTS threatens, at least for its first half, to walk all over recent middle-of-the-road yarns like HAYWIRE and CONTAGION, with an increasingly tense and complex narrative that yields few answers and, more chillingly, a very unclear sense of right and wrong.

SIDE EFFECTS’ storyline is deceptively simple; a young woman, Emily Taylor, apparently suffering from depression is prescribed experimental medication by Dr. Jonathan Banks which has some pretty abstract side effects, as the title suggests. It’s difficult to say much more without giving away some of the film’s biggest plot points, which really need to be seen firsthand rather than with prior knowledge.

There’s no denying that there are some intriguing elements to SIDE EFFECTS, but Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns do little to capitalise on them in the second act. Once the film passes the halfway mark, proceedings somehow fall flat, with SIDE EFFECTS giving the game away too early, with a twist ending unravelling long before we arrive at it. Though the film threatens to push the boundaries of its concept, the end ultimately sticks rigidly to tradition.

Still, Jude Law makes good with what he’s given, as does Rooney Mara when the script seldom attempts to bring out the best in any of the rest of its cast, giving them little room to manoeuvre. But SIDE EFFECTS is predominantly concerned with its main two characters and the strange patient-doctor relationship that defines the film’s dynamic.

Sadly, that dynamic is concerned little with tension – something a genre film such as SIDE EFFECTS could really benefit from – and, though the first half may provide plenty of intrigue, it never fully commits. Another middling trawl from Steven Soderbergh, SIDE EFFECTS is engaging enough in the moment, but utterly forgettable in the grand scheme of things.

 SIDE EFFECTS is released in UK cinemas on March 8th.