Life has its ups and downs and everyone gets sad once in a while, but the toll of mental illness can be grave. The numbers reveal that one in ten people in the US takes antidepressants and the nationwide rate of antidepressant use has quadrupled in the last 30 years. In most cases, these drugs help stabilize mood without any serious drawbacks. But adverse reactions can happen, as on display in the new thriller Side Effects, out this Friday in theaters across North America, written by Scott Burns and directed by Steven Soderbergh, the same people behind the 2011 viral pandemic movie Contagion (which Nature Medicine reviewed at the time).

Both films are structured around a specific modern-day fear. But the threat in Side Effects mutates faster than any virus could.

Rooney Mara and Channing Tatum star in Side Effects as Emily and Martin Taylor{credit}Peter Andrews, Open Road Films 2012{/credit}

In the movie, Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara) and her husband Martin (Channing Tatum) are a young and successful couple living a lavish lifestyle until Martin is sent to prison for insider trading (see trailer below). Devastated, Emily waits for him for four years while living in a tiny apartment in upper Manhattan, struggling with depression. When she is finally reunited with Martin, Emily becomes completely unhinged. After it’s thought that she’s a threat to herself, Emily is assigned to a psychiatrist named Jonathan Banks (Jude Law).

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