It began as a game in the name of science. Twenty men (eight 'guards'
and twelve 'prisoners') in an intense two week investigation into
aggressive behaviour in a simulated prison environment. It soon became
a quest to survive...
Inspired by a famous 1971 psychological experiment, Oliver Hirschbiegel's German-language movie The Experiment
finds a group of 20 volunteers randomly divided into 12 prisoners and
eight guards and asked to play out their roles for a fortnight while
scientists study their reactions.
A conflict arises between undercover
reporter Fahd (Moritz Bleibtreu), a con with a hidden agenda, and the
apparently mild-mannered Berus (Justus von Dohnanyi), a guard with a
megalomaniac streak.
The film begins as a psychological drama as
ordinary people settle into the game, with joking displays of
resistance by the "prisoners" greeted with increasing brutality from
the "guards," but detours into suspense and horror as Fahd, who needs
the experiment to get out of hand in order to make his story more
saleable, deliberately ratchets up the tension between the factions
only to see the situation spiral nightmarishly out of control as
various test subjects in both camps edge closer to snapping.
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