Review of The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015) by Ahnehnois — 25 Aug 2015

Anyone who's taken a psychology class is likely to recognize Philip Zimbardo and his goatee, as well as the Stanford Prison Experiment. He comes off in this movie as a megalomaniac and a creep, but I think that's kind of the point. And frankly, anyone who's watched his real life videos sees some of the same, I suspect. The film really twists the knife in terms of making all its characters seem normal, and yet so very wrong in what they're doing.

Like any film, aspects of the real narrative are consolidated and changed, but much of it, the prisoner abuse, the callousness, and the way it ended, are all real. And just when you think the movie has finally presented us with a hero, we read that the very same resting b*tchface character who finally objects to the experiment went on to marry the person who ran it. Yep, that's true to life.

I was glad that the movie briefly teased the aftermath of the study, and showed the participants talking about it. After all, their lives did go on after this. I was also gratified that the film indulged the story of the chief prison guard, who claims to have been running his own experiment on how far he could take things before someone objected. It's a complicated story; this is no true experiment at all, but an interesting intersection of events that raises more questions than it could ever answer.