Review of The Experiment (2010) by Andrew A — 11 Feb 2011

This movie was promising in concept but somewhat disappointing in execution. "The Experiment" involves 26 men being selected for an experiment modeling a prison in which some are placed as guards and the others as inmates. They are given specific rules which they need to follow in order to receive their $14 000 on completion of the experiment. During the course of the movie we see the Experiment spiral out of control.

This started badly for me due to the horrendous footage (unrelated to the main plot of the story) which the movie shows us within the first 10 minutes. Deeply themed with violence, gore and distaste the footage had me looking away due to my absolute outrage and shock. It was truly disgraceful and completely unnecessary. Nevertheless it showed me that this would be wincing-type movie.

I could see what this movie was trying to do. Through its violence it was trying to show how far people would go within certain environments. Furthermore it made a point of saying that we had control of our own actions. The moral points were definitely there, however to me they seemed to be lost within the illogical plot which this film seemed to follow.

Without trying to spoil too much: a lot of the prisoners decisions are obviously idiotic. For example: if one rule is to eat everything on your plate...for $14 000 you'd bloody eat everything on your damn plate without question...no matter how gross it was.

The movie just lacked logic it many aspects. Brody's character Travis is just a douche bag. He knows that if he doesn't behave he will suffer, and yet like a 14 year old class clown he continues to push the buttons of the guards. Even when the guards are clearly taking things out of hand; bashing and abusing people, never does anyone question why the organizers of the experiment haven't stepped in. If this movie is about human behavior then they have failed to properly portray how someone would think and question the actions of the guards.

To make matters worse the characters were very flat. I will definitely give the actors a big thumbs up because they pulled of their roles very well. However the story let them down. We are never shown enough about the main characters; therefore it is hard to understand them and see where their actions are coming from. Instead we are given very basic background knowledge.

As well as this there aren't enough scenes showing the inmates discussing the unmoral actions of the guards. There isn't enough time given to develop the inmates feelings about what is happening. This is largely because everything quickly seems to turn into violence, something the film constantly falls back on.

This is definitely a psychological thriller and does offer intrigue however at times it is infuriating and left me feeling like something was missing.