Side Effects uses its mystery thriller plot to steer us through a what-if about the potholes and legal pitfalls of the socio-psycho-pharmaceutical complex. This is done in a similar fashion to Soderbergh’s earlier Contagion, which masqueraded as a star strewn disaster blockbuster, whilst serving as an overview of the mechanisms in place to cope with an attack of the superbugs, a resulting global die-off, as well as possible shortcomings of the World Health Organization. Side Effects does its work with aplomb but towards the end its intelligibility suffers from an overabundance of plot twists.
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