Dark R-Rated Conspiracy Crime Thriller Is As Underrated Mystery, Stream Without Netflix

I tripped upon Side Effects when I was looking for a good thriller to watch with my hubby one night. We both love Steven Soderbergh films, and so I was exploring his rather large body of work.

I found his film about pharmaceutical drugs starring Channing Tatum, Rooney Mara, Jude Law, and Catherine Zeta Jones, among others. How had I missed this film when it was released in 2013? In any event, I’m glad I found it, and I cannot recommend it enough. 

Side Effects opens with a young woman, Emily Taylor (Mara), greeting her husband, Martin (Tatum) after his release from prison. He had done four years for insider trading on Wall Street.

The first 30 minutes of the movie feel tense, intense, and psychologically gripping as Emily appears almost as a zombie walking through life. Shortly after Martin comes home, Emily gets into her car and drives it straight into a concrete wall in her parking garage. 

She’s assigned a psychiatrist, Dr. Jonathan Banks (Law), who sits with Emily and tries to uncover her mental health issues.

He prescribes several different medications, but they all have nasty side effects she doesn’t like, and they don’t stop her from feeling suicidal and depressed.

At a loss, Banks contacts Emily’s previous psychiatrist, Dr. Victoria Siebert (Zeta Jones). Dr. Siebert recommends Dr. Banks gets Emily on a new drug, Ablixa, which is supposed to be a wonder drug.

After a few days, Emily says she feels better but she’s experiencing bouts of sleepwalking. 

One night, Martin comes home to their apartment to find Emily has set the table and is pouring milk into a glass to the point of overflowing, staring into space. Martin approaches Emily, and she stabs him to death, coldly, calmly, in a daze.

Martin falls to the floor and bleeds to death. What? Yes. This is all in the first half hour of the film. Next thing you know, Emily is on trial for murder, and Dr. Banks is testifying on her behalf, blaming the drug’s side effects for the murder. 

GFR SCORE

The rest of Side Effects is a spiral downward as Dr. Banks is accused by the public and by his colleagues of negligence. His life goes sideways as his wife leaves him and takes their son, and he begins to suspect that Emily has deceived him.

As he tries to untangle himself from the craziness that ensues, and Emily does her time in a psychiatric ward, you can’t help but ask yourself over and over, “What is happening?” You’ll have to watch to find out. 

Jude Law does such a great job in this film of playing the victim and the hero at the same time; he really comes out as the star of Side Effects, and Tatum and the rest of the cast play their parts spectacularly.

This is a gripping movie from beginning to end with such an interesting change of pace throughout that you continue guessing until the very last scene. Watch it on Tubi for free!