The Experiment

8/11/2013

Decent enough if unremarkable English-language take on Oliver Hirschbiegels superior Das Experiment, which itself was adapted from a novel (Black Box) which was inspired by a real experiment carried out at Stanford University in 1971. It was funded by the US Navy, and it was abandoned after only six days, when it went tits-up. The story: a bunch of people are interviewed, and 24 are selected to participate in a social experiment: they are to be coached out to a camera-ed up detention centre, where eight will be selected to play the role of prison guards while the remaining sixteen will adopt the role of prisoners. The experiment is scheduled to last for fourteen days, at the end of which the participants will receive their pay: fourteen grand each. There are rules though, and if any of