The Experiment (2010) 7/10

Starring : Adrien Brody, Forest Whitaker, Cam Gigandet, Clifton Collins Jr, Ethan Cohn, Fisher Stevens
Director : Paul T Scheuring
Running Time : 97 mins

A random selection of men are offered $14,000 to take part in a two week experiment, where they are chosen either to be prisoners or guards in a prison mock up, in which they are expected to keep peace and order and under no circumstances to use violence, but as the guards start to get power hungry and psychologically torture their prisoners, things get extremely out of hand.

Not a bad movie, based on true events, but it’s a shame that the makers of this film decided to rely on violent scare tactics to get their message across when the true psychological trauma inflicted on those involved in the original Stanford prison experiment was so much more worrying. The very idea of people taking on the roles they’ve been assigned to such a degree that they start unconsciously acting like those they are portraying could lead to some very disturbing events indeed.

You’ll like this if you liked : Unthinkable