Review of The Experiment (2010) by Tomas T — 08 Jan 2011

Based on a real events, the modern day remake movie The Experiment is not great, but it is not utter failure either.

The movie sets its roots on a real life experiment which took place in 1971 at Stanford University where 24 students took part in psychological expirement to study human behaviour in makeshift prison. The movie follows the real life script when it comes to setting, a group of volunteers sign up for an experiment for money in which the group is diveded into prisoners and guards, but thats where the similarities end.

The subjects are constantly kept under surveilance and must follow list of rules or the experiment will fail. After a day of joking around, the roles and "leaders" of the two groups (guards and prisoners) emerge and pretty soon the two groups are in for a collision. F.Whitaker suits the role of sadistic prison guard perfectly, clearly delusional and with control perversions he brings out the character well, but his colleague A.Brody does not fare that well as the liberal prisoner who is set out to object the guards totalitarian rule. The movie tries hard to bring more depth into the A.Brody's character through daily fantasies, but they just manage to interfare with the story.

Actors aside, even if the movie is violence oriantated it does sparks some though about the human element and how we have a need for rules and regulations by nature. These are best shown in the scenes where the more reluctant characters do the bidding of the group out of sheer pressure of coherence. This is the best the movie has to offer and I wished it focused more on the psychological side but instead it lets the violence take over towards the end of the movie pretty much toning down the accomplishments made earlier in the movie.