'Side Effects' International Trailer: Now With More Plot

As Steven Soderbergh hurtles toward retirement, he's dropping one last theatrical feature. (He also has the HBO movie Behind the Candelabra, but that's not hitting cinemas.) In Side Effects, Rooney Mara plays a woman dealing with her husband's (Channing Tatum) imminent release from prison. To help her cope with her anxiety, her psychiatrist (Jude Law) puts her on some new drugs. And then, somehow, everything goes terribly wrong.

I say "somehow" because the last couple of trailers have purposely been vague about the plotline. Characters walked around saying dramatic things against an unsettling backdrop of growing tension, and because all of it looked pretty well done, that was enough to attract some curiosity. But the latest interntional trailer finally gives us a better idea of what, exactly, happens in this movie. Watch it after the jump.

The last two trailers had me wondering how to connect all the dots — the 911 call, the lingerie pics, the courtroom scenes — but it looks like the answer may have been right there in the title all along. They all stem from the side effects caused by this (thankfully fictional) anti-anxiety medication. It seems so obvious in retrospect!

There's probably still more to the new film than we're seeing even in the trailer above, but in the same way that Contagion took fears about contamination to their worst-case-scenario endpoint, Side Effects seems to take our concerns about overmedication to their logical and terrible conclusion. If you've ever wondered about the consequences of messing with the mind, Side Effects has some horrifying answers for you.

Side Effects opens February 8 in the U.S. and March 15 (or "15 March," as they'd put it) in the U.K.

SIDE EFFECTS is a provocative thriller about Emily and Martin (Rooney Mara and Channing Tatum), a successful New York couple whose world unravels when a new drug prescribed by Emily's psychiatrist (Jude Law)—intended to treat anxiety—has unexpected side effects.