Truly Dreadful Film

Sadly Over-hyped

Powerful

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

"Das Experiment" is a German thriller movie from almost 15 years ago. It runs for 2 hours and was directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. This is not the only very famous German film he made, because he is also responsible for "Der Untergang". Hirschbiegel and lead actor Moritz Bleibtreu, around the age of 30 here, received awards recognition on really a lot of occasions and Justus von Dohnányi had his big breakthrough with this movie as well and received a German Film Award just like Bleibtreu. There are more German actors in here who are still somewhat famous quite some time later today. This includes Möhring, Gärtner, Monot Jr., Sawatzki and Berkel.The premise is simply: 20 men are recruited to take part in a role play, in which 10 of them are prison guards and the other 10 are inmates. It does not take long until authority, testosterone and power turn the whole scenario into a complete mess that results in 2 casualties in the end and many more heavily injured, all of them emotionally basically. Early on, there is some joking about the whole situation, but things get far more serious pretty quickly. I thought this was a good thriller, very tense from start to finish, but very graphic as well, so this may not be for the easily offended. Violence is only psychological for almost the entire movie until it escalates physically towards the ending. I personally think that the way things turned out here is not too realistic, but it is not a problem at all to enjoy this as a fictional film, even if it is based on a real experiment. This film was so successful that there is an American movie from 2010 based on this one starring Oscar winners Adrien Brody and Forest Whitaker. And, even more recently, there is another new American movie based on this one here with rising star Ezra Miller in the lead role. Overall, I recommend it, but be warned: This film is pretty tough to digest. Little final note to close this review: "Das Experiment" was Germany's submission to the Foreign Language Oscars, but did not score a nomination. One year later, Caroline Link's "Nowhere in Africa" won the Award.

'The Experiment' is based on the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, in which 24 Stanford students took on the roles of guards and prisoners for a psychological experiment in 1971. And within a period of only 6 days, those students had adapted to their roles so well that the conductors had to shut down the experiment prematurely. The experiment was seen by the conductors as an example for their hypothesis that the personality traits of prisoners and guards are the chief cause of abusive behavior in prison. However, it has since gone through quite a lot of criticism for many things including the ways the conductors influenced test subjects through their instructions, and the fact that students who volunteered for the experiment were mostly aggressive and authoritarian. It's also notable that BBC attempted to replicate this experiment in 2002 but did not get the same result.So in short, the Stanford Prison Experiment is not really an interesting discovery as it aspired to be, and so is this movie. Compared to the real-life experiment, the movie is even more ridiculous since it eventually ignores the test subjects' salary, one of the driven factors in the original experiment, and more importantly, it fails to mention the experiment's goal, and therefore makes the whole thing rather pointless. As the result, the only thing that the movie has 'proven' is violent people will act violently given the chance, a fact that can be seen in almost all thriller/action movies ever. The execution, fortunately, is a bit better that the premise. It's actually very suspense and gripping at times, and the characters' progression, at least within the first hour, is quite logical. The acting, however, was much less convincing. I've found myself laughing at some scenes that were supposed to be serious due to the terrible supporting cast. It also contains some very implausible details like how unprepared and understaffed the conductors are, or the relationship between the main character and his 'girlfriend'. I especially question the parts with the girlfriend, because I'm still not sure why the movie makers even felt that they needed to have her in the movie. As far as I can see, all she does is dragging the movie out, and showing some nudity.In conclusion, 'The Experiment' is a quite entertaining movie with a unique setting, but that's it. There's nothing really groundbreaking, or interesting about it. If that's what you expect, then I recommend watching a documentary on the original experiment instead.

I was excited to see a dramatisation of the famous Stanford experiment, as I've heard a lot about it. This version is set up pretty well, good cast, promising. I was surprised by a couple of odd "plot devices" in the first half hour: odd romantic meetings and high tech gadgets, but still giving it the benefit of the doubt. However, the second half diverts massively from the true story, thereby completely missing the point of this psychological folklore. Especially as I was expecting this to be mostly documentary of the experiment, I was horrified as it drifted more and more into Horror territory. And then a US remake too?!?!?! AVOID!!!!

Das Experiment (The Experiment) is a decent psychological thriller loosely based on the 1970s Stanford Prison Experiment. It follows the travails of failed journalist Tarek Fahd as he attempts to reinvigorate his career by joining and secretly documenting a prison simulation experiment. What follows is a descent into violence.The film is at its best when it examines the psychological degeneration of the experiment's participants. Initially charming guards, such as an Elvis impersonator, It is no coincidence that this is a German film, as there is a heavy emphasis on how ordinary men can degenerate into sadistic monsters. The Third Reich parallels are made explicit when one prisoner calls a particularly brutal guard a "dirty, rotten, stinky, Nazi." It is arguable that Hannah Arendt should have been given writing credits.The film suffers in its latter half, however, from an all too typical degeneration into action movie clichés and violence, with the film losing all sense of verisimilitude. (Particularly given the fact that in the actual Stanford Prison Experiment, students who played prisoners became submissive, not aggressive.) Furthermore, the film includes an all too typical romantic angle that distracts from the psychodrama. These flaws mar what could have been a far better film.