The Stanford Prison Experiment
Director: Kyle Patrick Alvarez
Year Released: 2015
Rating: 2.0
Reenactment of Dr. Philip Zimbardo's classic study of power and control (Zimbardo is played by Billy Crudup) as he and his team at Stanford University assemble a group of students to play "prisoners" and "guards" and the scenario gets out of control as the guards take the job too seriously and the prisoners get mistreated and keep begging to be released (Zimbardo himself gets sucked in by his own creation, playing God and losing a proper sense of scientific distance). Alvarez gets the feeling of claustrophobia down pat, but the main focus of the movie is on its (repetitive) punitive aspects (it revels in watching its prisoners, especially Ezra Miller's #8612, slammed around) and less on the actual psychological implications or "bigger picture" of the study - it isn't until Dr. Maslach (Olivia Thirlby) reappears in the final section that the movie actually acquires its ethical/moral center. How this and Stanley Milgram's obedience experiment were ever approved in the first place remains baffling ... although we're all the better for both, academically speaking.
