Review of The Experiment (2010) by Anahita S — 30 Sep 2010

This was a GREAT movie.I ABSOLUTELY loved it. It was thoroughly exciting & insightful. I'm a criminology major so I get really excited with this type of movie. At the least, this movie explores a dark side of human nature. More importantly, it exposes the fundamental flaws within our criminal justice system and the failure of its penal system (and other institutionalizing mechanisms), by exposing the way in which subcultures and gang mentalities arise as a result of human defense mechanism in hostile environments - the idea of "us versus them".

This type of phenomenon also occurs in other professions such as policing. There have been very similar real-life experiments conducted with similar results - I read of one in a prison setting like this movie. There was also a real life experiment conducted after the Holocaust whereby researchers were trying to establish "what kind of person does it take to engage in genocide, become a murderous monster or to do nothing while innocent people are being tortured and killed?". The results were frightening - can't remember the name of the experiment but you should google it if you're into this type of stuff - they had some parts on video. Anyyyyways....the movie was just great.