Side Effects (2013)
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
A woman turns to prescription medication as a way of handling her anxiety concerning her husband's upcoming release from prison.
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From Soderbergh's head-scratching opening homage to Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby to a plot that, at first, seems to be a cautionary legal tale of big pharma abuses, Side Effects unexpectedly develops into a post modern Hitchcockian thriller... which is actually akin to one of Brian De Palma's chilly psychological puzzles .
He plays games with the color palette and the sound mix; Mara has a spooky, translucent vulnerability that reminded me of Mia Farrow in “Rosemary’s Baby.’’
You’ll also detect echoes of Rosemary’s Baby (questionable psychiatrists involved in Manhattan highrise hijinks) and the 1981 Body Heat (an attractive couple whose passion turns toxic).
The premise is patently yet intriguingly ridiculous—a Manhattan-set psychological thriller that satirizes Big Pharma paranoia, while harking back to such crazy-lady favorites as Rosemary’s Baby and Fatal Attraction.
It’s no coincidence he opens his film with a slow, insinuating zoom into a distant apartment window, like “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Psycho.”
Soderbergh builds terrific tension in these sleepwalking episodes where his heroine seems to flirt with tragedy, recalling those drawn-out daydreams Kim Novak drifts through in Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.”
With its steady pacing and probing, supple camera work (handled by Soderbergh, under his pseudonym Peter Andrews), the film evokes classic psychodramas, from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, as well as kinky offshoots such as Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct.
Emily refers to "Madeleine" (Vertigo, 1958).
It is easy enough to spot Soderbergh’s influences – Vertigo and Les Diaboliques alongside countless B-movie psychological thrillers and Patricia Highsmith novels.
It’s easily his finest – and most commercial – effort since “Oceans 13.” It’s also like nothing he’s ever done before, as he boldly treads into the domain normally reserved for masters of suspense like Hitchcock (think “Vertigo”) and Brian DePalma (“Body Double,” anyone?).
With its steady pacing and probing, supple camera work (handled by Soderbergh, under his pseudonym Peter Andrews), the film evokes classic psychodramas, from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, as well as kinky offshoots such as Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct.
The premise is patently yet intriguingly ridiculous—a Manhattan-set psychological thriller that satirizes Big Pharma paranoia, while harking back to such crazy-lady favorites as Rosemary’s Baby and Fatal Attraction.
This last one, Side Effects, looks like an homage to the '80s heyday of the twisty psychological thriller—Fatal Attraction, Jagged Edge, and Dead Calm—and to a large extent, it plays out as exactly that.
A doozy of a Hitchcockian thriller with Jude Law, Rooney Mara and Catherine Zeta-Jones, “Effects” is a go-for-broke valentine to ’80s cinematic psychological potboilers such as “Jagged Edge” and “Fatal Attraction.”
It’s telling that Soderbergh watched Fatal Attraction “a lot” while preparing to shoot Side Effects (screenwriter Scott Z. Burns was probably busy studying Basic Instinct).
"Side Effects" takes a page from the "Fatal Attraction" school of late eighties/early nineties erotic thrillers, chucking it onto a contemporary hook: the pratfalls of the pharmaceutical industry.
With her long dark hair pulled back and thick-rimmed glasses, Zeta-Jones may be channeling Jeanne Tripplehorn’s Dr. Beth Garner in “Basic Instinct.”
With its steady pacing and probing, supple camera work (handled by Soderbergh, under his pseudonym Peter Andrews), the film evokes classic psychodramas, from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, as well as kinky offshoots such as Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct.
Catherine Zeta-Jones appears as another psychiatrist who's only looking out for herself (in more ways than one) and -- considering how things play out -- easily could have been lifted straight from an old Joe "Basic Instinct" Eszterhas plot, while Channing Tatum plays the patient's husband who isn't in the film that much, what with being in prison and such.
It’s telling that Soderbergh watched Fatal Attraction “a lot” while preparing to shoot Side Effects (screenwriter Scott Z. Burns was probably busy studying Basic Instinct).
Douglas could be just as famous making the same post–Wall Street movies: Fatal Attraction, The War of the Roses, Basic Instinct, Falling Down, Disclosure, The Game, A Perfect Murder, Traffic.
HH½ Director/editor/cinematographer Steven Soderbergh's alleged final theatrical film is as smart and stylish as one would expect, but like his other recent artsy genre essays — "Haywire," "Contagion" — its duller than its sources (in this case, "Bigger Than Life," "Basic Instinct" and "Psycho").
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Ignore the opening shot – a direct nod to Hitch’s Psycho - and the first 30 minutes of Side Effects could stand alone as a tender vignette about a woman doomed by her illness, her circumstances, and the ignorance of those entrusted with taking care of her.
“Contagion”), nods early on to Hitchcock’s “Psycho” as the camera settles randomly on Emily’s apartment window.
Playing with perception and opening with a shot lifted straight out of Psycho, Soderbergh makes his intention to play Hitch an obvious aspect of Side Effects‘ mystique.
Later on, around the 45-minute mark, a major character will get diced and spliced by a kitchen knife, as Janet Leigh was in Psycho.
But upon his release, something doesn’t feel quite right between them -- and, quite out of the blue at the 35-minute mark, one of the main characters does a Janet Leigh in Psycho and gets the blade.
You’ll also detect echoes of Rosemary’s Baby (questionable psychiatrists involved in Manhattan highrise hijinks) and the 1981 Body Heat (an attractive couple whose passion turns toxic).
That world is only a savvy backdrop for what screenwriter Scott Z. Burns has accurately characterized as a twisty adult thriller in the vein of "Double Indemnity" or "Body Heat."
See it by all means — especially if you love “Body Heat” and “The Usual Suspects” — but be careful who you trust.
This last one, Side Effects, looks like an homage to the '80s heyday of the twisty psychological thriller—Fatal Attraction, Jagged Edge, and Dead Calm—and to a large extent, it plays out as exactly that.
A doozy of a Hitchcockian thriller with Jude Law, Rooney Mara and Catherine Zeta-Jones, “Effects” is a go-for-broke valentine to ’80s cinematic psychological potboilers such as “Jagged Edge” and “Fatal Attraction.”
The result suggests Jagged Edge retold in the measured voice of the New Yorker.
The movie’s fundamentally “beach read” nature (promotional interviews with the filmmaker have pinpointed such influences as Fatal Attraction and Jagged Edge) means it’s not a summation — it’s a one-off.
Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects is a grippingly “Hitchcockian” movie, but not in the manner of, say, Brian De Palma, who blithely appropriated the master’s narrative elements and visual techniques for ’80s films like Dressed to Kill and Body Double.
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Burns, by the way, wrote the screenplay for Contagion, also directed by Soderbergh.
What I can say about “Side Effects” is that writer Scott Z. Burns and director Steven Soderbergh (who previously collaborated on “Contagion” and “The Informant!”)
Working once more with screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (“Contagion,” “The Informant!”), the director sets up a dramatic situation whose suspense radiates out in many directions.
Without going into too much detail, it's as though Burns took all the melodramatic plot developments he smartly left out of his screenplay for "Contagion" (another film with a dim view of the pharmaceutical industry) and stuffed them into "Side Effects" instead.
Bad things occur, and Soderbergh and his screenwriter, Scott Z. Burns (he wrote Contagion for the director), lead us to certain conclusions about Emily, Dr. Banks, Emily's previous shrink Dr. Victoria Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones), compromised physicians in general, predatory big-pharma money, the role of prescription medications in contemporary society, and so on.
Having recently tackled a tale about a mass population wipe-out in "Contagion," director Steven Soderbergh now continues down the cautionary trail with this effort that was penned by Scott Z. Burns.
Soderbergh wants to do for SSRIs what Hitchcock did for psychoanalysis in Spellbound, and for a while he does.
Sworn to the reviewer’s oath of not revealing too much about a mystery film, yet wanting to drop a few hints to the kinoscenti, I’ll just add that Side Effects summons references to other Hitchcocks — Spellbound, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, Marnie — and such Hitchcock-tribute films as Obsession, Dressed to Kill, Raising Cain and Passion made by the director’s No. 1 fan, Brian De Palma.