Something haunted, possessed beneath surface in ‘Side Effects’

The music tells us what kind of movie Side Effects is going to be. It coils beneath what seems like a realistic plot and whispers that something haunted and possessed is going on. Imagine music for sorcery and then dial it down to ominous foreboding. Without Thomas Newmans score, this would be a lesser film, even another film.

We meet an edgy young woman named Emily (Rooney Mara). Her husband, Martin (Channing Tatum), has been released after four years in prison for insider trading. Dont weep for him. At a party he explains, Its the culture. They resume. They dine. They make eager love. Things dont go for her as smoothly as it seemed. She is referred to a psychiatrist named Banks (Jude Law). Shes been under care before, with a shrink named Victoria Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones), but Banks thinks she may get good results from a new drug named Ablixa. Also, a drug company has paid him $50,000 to study it during the licensing period.

This Banks has issues. A Brit in Manhattan, hes divorced from a dubious woman (Vinessa Shaw). He immigrated to the U.S., he explains, because in the U.K. when you run into psychiatric treatment its assumed you may get sicker, and over here its assumed youre getting well. Naturally that tilts him toward pushing pills. Emilys use of Ablixa causes some alarming behavior, including a murder while in a blackout, and shes committed to a mental hospital.

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Something haunted, possessed beneath surface in ‘Side Effects’