Tagged: Psychological Thriller

Review – Side Effects (2013)

Director: Steven Soderbergh     

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

Side EffectsWhen I visited America a couple of years ago, I was struck by the advertising of prescription medications on TV. Viewers were encouraged to ask their doctor about the latest cholesterol medication or anti-depressant. It seemed symptomatic of a society with a disturbingly consumerist relationship with medication. It is precisely this mindset, particularly towards mood-altering medications, that Steven Soderbergh seeks to expose in Side Effects.

Dr. Jonathan Banks is a professionally ambitious psychiatrist who comes into contact with troubled Emily Taylor after it appears she has tried to take her own life. With a history of anxiety she is struggling to adjust after her husband returns from prison. When the usual suspects don’t seem to be doing the job, Banks turns to a new drug called Ablixa, whose advertisements encourage patients to “take back tomorrow.” But like all mood altering meds, it has a couple of side effects.

Both of their lives are soon rocked when Emily is arrested for murder, seemingly while under the influence of her medication. Dr. Banks is then caught between a rock and a hard place. If he chooses to defend Emily against the charges, blaming the drugs for her actions, the finger of blame then turns to him as the man who prescribed the medication. As his career starts unravelling before his eyes, he sets about investigating the events to work out exactly what happened.

While we are not encouraged to believe that Emily’s condition doesn’t warrant medication, Soderbergh uses other peripheral characters to mount his criticism of an overmedicated society which has become reliant on mood altering drugs. We see one woman calmly popping a beta blocker to help her get through a job interview, while others share their knowledge and familiarity with the effects of the various mood altering medications that Emily has been prescribed. While this social commentary ultimately makes way for a reasonably regulation thriller narrative it is interesting while it’s there.

Jude Law and Rooney Mara carry much of the load in this film and both put in strong performances. Law gives Dr. Banks a very composed and measured personality, but as the events unfold he deteriorates, growing more and more desperate. It is interesting to watch this character who makes his living from helping people keep it together fall apart. Mara, who burst onto the scene with her roles in The Social Network and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, delivers arguably her best performance, opting for subtlety when it would have been easy to go over the top.

Soderbergh’s body of work demonstrates an impressive stylistic range, with drastically different films like Traffic, Erin Brokovich, the Oceans 11 films and sex, lies and videotape. In this case he adopts a very neat, efficient and largely unobtrusive visual style. As well as directing the film, he acted as cinematographer (under his regular pseudonym Peter Andrews) and editor (this time as Mary Ann Bernard).

Steven Soderbergh has suggested that this will be his final feature film – though it should be noted that his made-for-TV Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra is set to receive a cinematic release in some markets. From here on in he plans to focus his energies on other artistic pursuits, primarily long-form television. If Side Effects does end up being his parting gift as a feature filmmaker – which I’m not entirely convinced of – it is not a bad note to leave on. While it won’t sit among the very best examples of his work, it is a good thriller with an interesting central premise.

Rating – ★★★☆

Review by Duncan McLean

Review – Stoker (2013)

Director: Chan-Wook Park

Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode, Alden Ehrenreich, Dermot Mulroney, Jackie Weaver

StokerWritten by Wentworth Miller, who you may know as one of the stars of the television series Prison Break, and heavily indebted to Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, Stoker is a coming of age story with a difference. Think less Stand by Me and more Carrie.

India Stoker is a morose teenage girl, darker than your normal morose teenage girl, uncomfortable in her own skin and unsure of her identity. When her father, with whom she was close, is killed in a car accident she is left without a buffer between her and her troubled mother, with whom she has a strained relationship. Living alone together in large Southern mansion, they are surprised by the arrival of her Uncle Charlie, a brother of her fathers whom she didn’t know existed. Charlie arrives out of the blue and declares his intention to stay for a while. He is young, handsome, and well-travelled, and instantly charms India’s mother, while India is more cautious and distrusting of this mysterious uncle. With time she finds this distrust matched with a strange sense of kinship, before learning the dangerous truth about Uncle Charlie… he is a psychopathic serial killer.

This psychological thriller is directed by Korean filmmaker Chan-Wook Park who gained international attention in 2004, when his revenge thriller Oldboy won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and became a cult favourite around the world. Stoker marks his first foray into English-language filmmaking and he has no trouble applying his immense talent for visual storytelling to a different language. The images are masterfully composed, and cleverly edited together, including an interesting transitionary device where items that appear to be part of one shot end up becoming part of the shot on the other side of the dissolve.

Stoker has a creepy, chilling tone – established through the way the picture is photographed, the performances of the actors, and the music – that elicits quite a visceral reaction. Before you process the narrative information, before you understand what is going on, you are already feeling that sense of unease and mistrust.

The film has a Gothic feel to it, no doubt resulting from the fact that much of the action takes place in the Stoker’ old Southern mansion, which looks unchanged since the 1930s. In fact, it makes it initially quite difficult to pin down a time period for the events. You find yourself assuming that you are watching a period piece from the first half of the 20th century until we get a couple of scenes at the school which makes it apparent that it is the present day.

Stoker’s second half lacks the subtlety of its slow-burning first half, with that spookiness and sense of menace that is so overpowering in the film’s early passages making way for more direct, confronting images of violence. The eroticising of these acts of violence adds another disturbing layer to the bond being formed between India and her uncle.

Stoker will only receive a limited release, and likely won’t make a huge impact, but it could well be one of the year’s best films. It is a fantastic psychological thriller: creepy, compelling and strangely beautiful.

Rating – ★★★★☆

Review by Duncan McLean