‘I know what I’m capable of, and it hurts…’
Back in the early days, conspiracy theories were a fun diversion championed by mostly harmless websites such as Cracked and Snopes rather than a harbinger of the end of the human race as they seem to be now. While the Stanford Prison Experiment is not a conspiracy theory, it definitely happened; it still feels like it belongs to the days of MSN Messenger and Napster. You can imagine settling in for a night of reading about the Stanford Prison Experiment and then clicking onto an article on MK Ultra before taking in a flash video of a cartoon badger – halcyon days.
Unsurprisingly, the radical experiment has been fertile ground for pop culture. A German-language film about the phenomenon, entitled Das Experiment, was released in 2001 and then remade for an American audience in 2010, before IFC Films released The Stanford Prison Experiment in 2015. And, it’s pretty good…
Dr. Philip Zimbardo (Billy Crudup) pays a bunch of college students to participate in an experiment that involves creating a fake ‘prison’. The volunteers are randomly assigned as ‘prisoners’ or ‘guards,’ with Michael Angarano, Nicholas Braun, and Keir Gilchrist heading up the guards, and Ezra Miller, Tye Sheridan, and Johnny Simmons making up the prisoners.
Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez excels in capturing the pressure-cooker atmosphere of the experiment and also of trying to understand how a fairly straightforward role-play scenario almost had tragic consequences. The experiment itself is a fascinating (and troubling) insight into human nature, and Alvarez captures that unsettling complexity through both dialogue and the sickly yellow lighting. The ensemble cast shares a convincing chemistry, with Miller, Sheridan, and Simmons all suitably fired up by their shabby treatment, and Angarano is spookily potent as the prime antagonist. Crudup also shines as the supposed adult in the room, and the cumulative effect feels like an authentic retelling of a historical event that has taken on almost mythic proportions.
The Stanford Prison Experiment perhaps runs out of steam a little in the third act, and it lacks some of the bombastic propulsiveness of The Experiment, but as a comment on human nature it’s pretty damn effective.
