The Experiment

The thriller The Experiment follows 26 men who have been recruited to participate in a psychological study, in which they are attributed the role of either prison guards or prisoners. Remake of the German psychological thriller Das Experiment (2001) about power strategies and group pressure, starring Oscar laureate Adrien Brody and Forest Whitaker.

The men are locked up in a fake prison for two weeks. The prisoners’ task is to abide by the lenient rules, whereas the guards have to keep law and order without resorting to violence. Everyone is free to quit the experiment at any time, but in that case the other participants will not receive the promised fee. At first, everything seems to work out just fine, but gradually the relationship between both groups becomes tense to the extreme.
Just like its German predecessor The Experiment is based on the 1971 ‘Stanford Prison Experiment’, in which students were confined in a room as guards and prisoners.