Film

Side Effects

A woman's prescription for anxiety spirals into something darker when her medicated behavior threatens everyone around her. Steven Soderbergh's sleek thriller is a paranoid puzzle-box where you're never quite sure who's manipulating whom. It's for anyone who enjoys being genuinely wrong-footed—the kind of film that rewards a second viewing because the clues were always there.

TMDb rating3.3

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love psychological thrillers where the pleasure lies in doubt about who is steering whom, delivered with cool, precise craft from Steven Soderbergh's clinical eye.

Skip it if you want brisk momentum or a clean, reassuring payoff, since it is measured, dialogue-driven and happy to leave you uneasy.

What it asks of you: Under two hours of patient, dialogue-heavy build that rewards close attention; the unease accumulates in small domestic details and clinical conversations rather than jolts.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Gone Girl2014

Another marriage-as-battleground thriller with an unreliable woman at its center, but with Fincher's surgical direction and a twist that recontextualizes everything before it. Equally brilliant at misdirection and performance.

But The husband's passivity can read as hollow, and the film's cynicism about gender and media doesn't offer much comfort. Nearly three hours of mounting dread.

Gone Girl poster

Shutter Island2010

DiCaprio investigates a psychiatric hospital while reality crumbles around him. Scorsese's approach is more expressionist than Soderbergh's, but both films nail that queasy feeling of not trusting your own perception.

But Tropier than Side Effects, with heavy-handed symbolism that some find dated. The third act explanation can feel reductive.

Shutter Island poster

Contagion2011

Soderbergh's own pandemic thriller shares Side Effects' cold precision and paranoid structure. He orchestrates ensemble dread with the same mathematical detachment, turning systemic dysfunction into visceral suspense.

But More procedural than psychological; some find it chilly rather than gripping. The plot mechanics matter more than emotional stakes.

Contagion poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Side Effects

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Permanent Midnight1998

Both explore the dark bargain we strike with substances—promised relief that mutates into something far more destructive—but Permanent Midnight lives in the addict's despair while Side Effects maintains clinical distance.

Ben Stiller (remember him here?) plays a TV writer whose addiction spirals into chaos. It shares Side Effects' interest in how pharmaceutical escape and behavioral spiral are two sides of the same coin, but from inside the addict's head rather than observing from outside.

But Genuinely depressing in ways that don't offer narrative satisfaction. Stiller's performance is deeply unsexy and the film feels like a hangover.

Permanent Midnight poster
More like this (8)

Stoker2013

Park Chan-wook's American debut is similarly twisty and immaculately composed, with a woman navigating psychological manipulation through a carefully constructed facade. Visual storytelling as plot.

But Slow-burn pacing and oblique symbolism won't satisfy anyone wanting clear answers. Genuinely uncomfortable sexual dynamics throughout.

Stoker poster

The Game1997

Fincher's underrated thriller about a man caught in an elaborate conspiracy shares Soderbergh's love of narrative trickery. Both directors understand that the best twist isn't the what—it's the why.

But The logic strains if you think too hard. Some dismiss it as a prototype for Fincher's better work, missing the point entirely.

The Game poster

Nightcrawler2014

Gyllenhaal's sociopath navigates systems of manipulation and exploitation with unsettling charm. Like Side Effects, it's about someone who understands the game better than everyone else, and the collateral damage they leave.

But The protagonist is actively repugnant, and the film offers no moral comfort. Relentless and bleak throughout.

Nightcrawler poster

The Machinist2004

A man's grip on reality disintegrates through insomnia and paranoia. Christian Bale's haunted performance and Brad Anderson's suffocating direction create the same sense of psychological freefall that Side Effects achieves chemically.

But Deliberately opaque and austere. Some find the ending frustratingly ambiguous rather than intriguingly so.

The Machinist poster

Mulholland Drive2001

Lynch's Los Angeles nightmare wraps murder, delusion, and identity crisis into a film that mutates on every viewing. Like Side Effects, it's a masterclass in making you question what's real and who you're rooting for.

But Willfully nonlinear; some scenes feel gratuitous. If you don't accept ambiguity as payment, this will infuriate you.

Mulholland Drive poster

Prisoners2013

Villeneuve's bleak kidnapping drama shares Side Effects' interest in how desperation and moral compromise corrupt good people. Both explore the gap between what we believe and what we can prove.

But Over two and a half hours of grim procedural investigation with no catharsis. The violence is unflinching and the ending offers no redemption.

Prisoners poster

A Tale of Two Sisters2003

Both films understand that the most effective thriller isn't about external danger but about watching someone's perception of reality splinter, turning the audience into active detectives of the protagonist's sanity.

This Korean horror-thriller appears to be about a disturbed family but is actually a fractured narrative about grief and dissociation told through beauty and dread. Like Side Effects, it weaponizes your own interpretation against you—nothing is what it seems because the narrator's mind is unreliable.

But Slow-paced atmospheric horror that privileges mood over plot clarity. The payoff is psychological and subtle, not visceral.

A Tale of Two Sisters poster

High and Low1963

Both films are less interested in whodunit than in the web of social and economic conditions that make crime inevitable—they're thrillers about systems, not just secrets.

Kurosawa's crime masterpiece begins as a kidnapping thriller but becomes a meditation on class, consequence, and the systems that allow evil to flourish. Like Side Effects, it's obsessed with how one person's desperation creates cascading damage through multiple lives.

But Three hours of 1960s Japanese cinema; the pacing is deliberate and the social commentary overwhelms plot momentum for modern audiences. Black and white and subtitled.

High and Low poster

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Shutter Island, Vigil