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The Stanford Prison Experiment

In 1971, twenty-four male students are selected to take on randomly assigned roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison situated in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. In 1971, twenty-four male students are selected to take on randomly assigned roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison situated in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. In 1971, twenty-four male students are selected to take on randomly assigned roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison situated in the basement of the Stanford psychology building.

• Kyle Patrick Alvarez
• Tim Talbott
• Philip Zimbardo
• Ezra Miller
• Tye Sheridan
• Billy Crudup
• 130 User reviews
• 91 Critic reviews
• 67 Metascore
• 4 wins & 3 nominations

Top cast 38

• Daniel Culp …

• Peter Mitchell …

• Dr. Philip Zimbardo

• Dr. Christina Maslach

• Christopher Archer

• Anthony Carroll

• John Lovett

• Gavin Lee …

• Prisoner 416

• Jerry Sherman …

• Jeff Jansen …

• Jesse Fletcher

• Kyle Parker

• Paul Beattie …

• Hubbie Whitlow …
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Although never mentioned in the movie, the real life experiment was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research and was of interest to both the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps as an investigation into the causes of conflict between military guards and prisoners.
• Goofs When Dr. Zimbardo speaks with his colleague, the colleague says that he will see him at the beginning of the semester. Stanford does not have semesters; rather, it has a quarter academic calendar.

Daniel Culp : I know you're a nice guy.

Christopher Archer : So why do you hate me?

Daniel Culp : Because I know what you can become.

• Connections Featured in WatchMojo: Top 10 Creepiest Historic Events That Are Scarier than Horror Movies (2020)

User reviews 130

• Sergeant_Tibbs
• Aug 7, 2015
• How long is The Stanford Prison Experiment? Powered by Alexa
• July 17, 2015 (United States)
• United States
• Official site
• Untitled Stanford Prison Experiment Project
• Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA
• Coup d'Etat Films
• Sandbar Pictures
• Abandon Pictures
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Jul 19, 2015

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 2 minutes

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Students of high school or university psychology classes are probably familiar with the Stanford Prison Experiment. Run in 1971 at the behest of the U.S. Navy, the experiment intended to investigate the cause of conflict between guards and prisoners in military correctional facilities. Dr. Philip Zimbardo and his team chose 24 male Stanford students and divvied them up into guards and prisoners. Turning the basement of one of the student halls into a makeshift prison, Zimbardo placed his subjects under surveillance and watched as the prisoners became passive and the guards exhibited authority by way of sometimes sadistic psychological torture. Zimbardo ended the experiment 6 days into its 2-week run, mostly due to the objections of his fiancée. She felt Zimbardo had become an unhealthy part of his own experiment.

A documentary about this could potentially be fascinating, as some of the actual experiment exists on film. Unfortunately, “The Stanford Prison Experiment” is a dramatization, and no matter how much it may adhere to the well-documented specifics of Zimbardo’s work, it is a massive failure. It prefers to abstract the experiment from any psychological theories or details, opting instead to merely harp on endless, repetitive scenes of prisoner abuse. One particular guard, who thinks he’s Strother Martin in “ Cool Hand Luke ,” abuses the prisoners. The prisoners take the abuse, rebelling once or twice before becoming passive. Zimbardo glares at a TV screen doing nothing while his guards break the rules of the contract everybody signed at the outset. Repeat ad nauseum.

These scenes are supposed to shock the viewer, but they did not work for me, because I just didn’t care. The film reduces the entire experiment to a Dead Teenager movie whose slasher just roughs them up. Prisoners are referred to by numbers in order to strip them of their personal identities, and the film keeps them at this level of distance. We never get to know any subject outside of brief sketches, so the victims become disposable. Despite the best efforts of the actors on both sides of the law, the film is completely clinical in its depiction, striking the same note for over 2 hours. It gets real dull, real fast.

I didn’t care because this isn’t remotely like an actual prison; it’s a bunch of privileged kids playing dress-up for $15 a day. Even a priest Zimbardo hires as a prison chaplain tells the doctor “it’s good that these privileged kids experience prison life.” The actual reasons for the experiment (and its military involvement) are never expressed in Tim Talbott ’s screenplay, so the priest’s comment almost serves as the reason for these tests. And the film takes great pains to tell us that nobody in the experiment suffered “long term psychological damage” after it was abruptly cancelled. I’m sure someone who has experienced the harsh realities of actual prison life would feel relieved that these young men weren’t scarred.

The best scene in “The Stanford Prison Experiment” deals with an actual prisoner and serves to highlight my disdain for how the film trades emotion and details for exploitative shocks. The fantastic Nelsan Ellis (last seen in “ Get On Up ”) plays Jesse, an ex-con brought in by Zimbardo’s team as an expert witness to their proceedings. At a mock parole board hearing, Jesse rips into an inmate, treating him as inhumanely as possible while verbally shredding the inmate’s explanation for why he should be paroled. After the stunned inmate is sent back to his cell, Jesse reveals that he was recreating his own parole board treatment. He tells Zimbardo that playing the role of his own tormentor “felt good, and I hated that it did.” This, in a nutshell, is what the actual experiment sought to explore, that is, the nature of even the nicest human beings to commit evil. Jesse’s revelation, and the psychological toll it takes on him, is more effective than anything else the film conjures up. If only the movie had spent more time interacting with the Strother Martin-wannabe’s own thoughts rather than trudging him out only for sadism.

The film reduces Zimbardo to some kind of megalomaniac who doesn’t know what he is doing. This makes his research seem half-assed and unethical. He watches the guards strike the prisoners (a direct violation of the rules) and the film paints him as the biggest villain of all. He challenges anyone who questions his methods and authority, and at one point, he absurdly sits in a hallway like a low-rent Charles Bronson hoping for the return of a subject who might jeopardize his research. (In the actual case, Zimbardo simply moves the prison to a location unknown by the subject.) And though his intentions are to “feminize” the prisoners by giving them “dresses” that barely hide their genitalia, “The Stanford Prison Experiment” implies that Zimbardo’s sole reason for stopping the experiment was the moment when his guards forced the inmates into a gay sex pantomime. Violence and hog-tying inmates were OK, but none of that gay stuff, the movie seems to say.

Billy Crudup deserves some kind of medal for his attempt to breathe life into his one dimensional character, as do actors like Ezra Miller and Olivia Thirlby . But they are undermined by a poor script, horror movie-style music and ripe dramatizations that exist solely to make the viewer feel superior. I despise movies like this and “ Compliance ” because they pretend to say something profound about their scenarios but are, at heart, cynically manipulative trash designed to make audiences pat themselves on the back for not being “like those people.” Had we been forced to identify with anyone, prisoner or guard, the film might have achieved the palpable discomfort of forcing us to look at ourselves. That was one of the goals of the actual Stanford Prison Experiment. This movie just wants to superficially disturb, and it’s not even successful at that.

Odie Henderson

Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire  here .

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Film credits.

The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015)

Rated R for language including abusive behavior and some sexual references

122 minutes

Billy Crudup as Dr. Philip Zimbardo

Ezra Miller as Daniel Culp - Prisoner '8612'

Michael Angarano as Christopher Archer

Tye Sheridan as Peter Mitchell - Prisoner 819

Olivia Thirlby as Christina Zimbardo

Johnny Simmons as Jeff Jansen

Gaius Charles as Banks

James Wolk as Penny

Thomas Mann as Prisoner 416

Moisés Arias as Actor

Keir Gilchrist as John Lovett

Nelsan Ellis as Jesse Fletcher

• Kyle Patrick Alvarez
• Tim Talbott

Director of Photography

• Jas Shelton

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The Stanford Prison Experiment

Where to watch.

Watch The Stanford Prison Experiment with a subscription on Paramount+, rent on Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

As chillingly thought-provoking as it is absorbing and well-acted, The Stanford Prison Experiment offers historical drama that packs a timelessly relevant punch.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Kyle Patrick Alvarez

Billy Crudup

Dr. Philip Zimbardo

Michael Angarano

Christopher Archer

Moises Arias

Anthony Carroll

Nicholas Braun

Gaius Charles

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Review: ‘The Stanford Prison Experiment’ Revisits the Psychology of Power and Abuse

• Share full article

By Neil Genzlinger

• July 16, 2015

Fine ensemble acting brings a notorious psychological study to life in “The Stanford Prison Experiment.” The research, now 44 years old, may today seem as if it merely confirmed the obvious, but the film, by Kyle Patrick Alvarez, certainly makes you feel the claustrophobic intensity of what went on.

The film is about a 1971 study done by a Stanford University professor, Philip Zimbardo, in which students were recruited to play either guards or inmates in a make-believe prison. Guess what? People put in positions of authority, like prison guards, sometimes abuse that authority, and in startlingly cruel ways.

Anatomy | The Stanford Prison Experiment

In this anatomy of a scene, kyle patrick alvarez narrates a sequence from his film..

Billy Crudup, playing Dr. Zimbardo, is the most recognizable name in the cast, and he does nice work portraying a man who, as the experiment spirals out of control, is torn between protecting the students and protecting his research. But it’s the young actors playing the students who really make an impression.

Michael Angarano is downright terrifying as a guard who patterns his behavior after a particularly nasty character in the prison movie “Cool Hand Luke,” which had come out in 1967. The students playing prisoners adopt attitudes ranging from rebellious to meek, but none are immune to the brutal treatment of their overseers.

The experiment’s methodologies and meanings have been analyzed endlessly over the years, and the film doesn’t delve deeply into these interpretations and critiques. It doesn’t need to; this stark and riveting version of events speaks for itself.

“The Stanford Prison Experiment” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) for language and intensity.

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The stanford prison experiment, common sense media reviewers.

Powerful depiction of shocking, harrowing real-life events.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

More of a cautionary tale than a positive message,

The characters are mainly victims, and most are su

Psychological abuse. Prisoners are forced to prete

Prisoner forced to strip. Naked bottom shown. Sexu

Uses of "f--k," "s--t," "bitch," "motherf----r," "

Frequent smoking. References to drinking and drugs

Parents need to know that The Stanford Prison Experiment is a drama based on a famous real-life 1971 psychological experiment in which college students took on the roles of either prison guards or prisoners. The material is very strong, with psychological abuse, fighting, beating with nightsticks, screaming…

Positive Messages

More of a cautionary tale than a positive message, the movie warns about abuse of power and attitudes toward authority. Nobody knows how they'd actually behave in this situation, but perhaps some foresight will help.

Positive Role Models

The characters are mainly victims, and most are surprised at just how far things went, as if they were unable to control their attitudes and behavior.

Violence & Scariness

Psychological abuse. Prisoners are forced to pretend to have sex. Fighting. Beating with nightsticks. Screaming panic attacks. References to rape.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Prisoner forced to strip. Naked bottom shown. Sexual situations.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Uses of "f--k," "s--t," "bitch," "motherf----r," "bulls--t," "ass," "bastard," "humping," "cum," "goddamn," "Jesus Christ" (as an exclamation).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Frequent smoking. References to drinking and drugs.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Stanford Prison Experiment is a drama based on a famous real-life 1971 psychological experiment in which college students took on the roles of either prison guards or prisoners. The material is very strong, with psychological abuse, fighting, beating with nightsticks, screaming panic attacks, and references to rape. (It might have actually qualified as a "torture" movie if not for the fact that it's not "real.") Language is also strong, with many uses of "f--k," "s--t," and more. Prisoners are forced to pretend to have sex, and there are sexual references. Cigarette smoking is prevalent, and there are references to drinking and drugs. The story of the experiment is standard in most psychology textbooks today, and it serves as a fascinating cautionary tale, as well as a look at our inner workings and the way that power can influence us. Adults and older teens with strong stomachs will likely have a lot to talk about. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (1)
• Kids say (5)

Based on 1 parent review

True story. Good movie but not for youth

What's the story.

In August 1971, at Stanford University, Dr. Philip Zimbardo ( Billy Crudup ) prepares for a most unusual kind of psychological experiment. He recruits several male students to portray either prisoners or guards in a mock prison situation (a coin toss decides their role). A hallway and several offices are prepared as cells. The guards quickly adapt to their roles of authority -- aided by their uniforms, nightsticks, and sunglasses -- while the prisoners, wearing numbered gowns and stocking caps, become submissive. The experiment is planned to last two weeks, but it's only a matter of days before things escalate beyond expectations, and the guards start subjecting prisoners to more extreme methods of psychological torture.

Is It Any Good?

This film is a fascinating, revealing, upsetting experience. A movie about the real-life 1971 Stanford prison experiment could have been sadistic and unwatchable, but director Kyle Patrick Alvarez's clinical approach focuses on realism and psychological drama rather than on thrills. Alvarez doesn't try to professionally polish the prison setting; instead, it has a functional, homemade look that makes it feel more immediate. The way the characters wear their hair and clothes -- and they way they carry themselves -- contributes to what feels like an authentic period piece.

The ensemble performances are strong, with the actors uniformly selling the horrors of the grim material, especially former child actor Michael Angarano , who, for his guard role, decides to adopt a scary southern accent (like Strother Martin's in Cool Hand Luke ). Crudup is also terrific, balancing the scholarly importance of his study with its moral conundrums, as is Nelsan Ellis as a former real-life prisoner who consults.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about The Stanford Prison Experiment 's violence . How much actual violence is shown, and how much is in the form of threats or power struggles? What's the effect on the audience? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

What happens in the experiment? Why do the guards become so abusive and the prisoners so submissive? What does the experiment reveal about human nature/behavior?

In the beginning, most of the students say that they would choose to be a prisoner. Why is this? Would you choose to be a prisoner or a guard?

Does this experiment apply to bullies ? Is the abuse of authority and power similar or different?

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 17, 2015
• On DVD or streaming : November 17, 2015
• Cast : Billy Crudup , Michael Angarano , Olivia Thirlby
• Director : Kyle Patrick Alvarez
• Inclusion Information : Gay directors, Latino directors, Multiracial directors, Female actors, Bisexual actors
• Studio : IFC Films
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 122 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language including abusive behavior and some sexual references
• Last updated : July 19, 2024

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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What the Creator of the Stanford Prison Experiment Thinks of the New Film About It

When the Stanford Prison Experiment concluded in 1971, it was a watershed moment for social psychology. The study, conducted by Stanford University Professor Philip Zimbardo, was designed to fully simulate a jail for 14 days in order to study the effects of imprisonment. Twelve young men were randomly assigned to be guards, and twelve were assigned to be prisoners, and locked in a Palo Alto   basement. 

Over the course of six days, the young men took on their roles fully. “Guards” emotionally and physically abused the “inmates,” and “inmates” became reticent to question authority and sank into deep depressions. Things degraded to the point that the experiment was called off early. Although today the study is widely acknowledged as unethical, the experiment is still taught in psychology classes as an example of how authority corrupts — not to mention as an example of why scientific research involving human subjects is so heavily   regulated.

The movie version, which has been kicking around Hollywood for years, has finally been released, allowing viewers to experience the study and all its horrifying and elucidating truths about human nature. Starring Billy Crudup, Ezra Miller, and Michael Angarano and based Zimbardo’s book The Lucifer Effect , director Kyle Patrick Alverez re-creates the experiment with startling, and often upsetting, accuracy. (At the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, the film won the Alfred P. Sloan prize for science in film.) Zimbardo, who was a consultant on the film, spoke with Science of Us at the movie’s New York premiere at No. 8 about watching himself depicted onscreen, the film’s honesty, and why he still stands by his   findings.

What was it like for you to watch this film? Strange. Because they used my name. Everyone else has a fictional name. When I’m watching someone say “Dr. Zimbardo,” I say “yes.” And then, of course, I know all the dialogue. So I’m finishing in my head the sentence of the prisoner or guard, but it was very exciting. Because the movie is a brilliant re-creation of what really happened that weekend in the basement, and it is done better than I could have imagined. This has been going on for 35 years. Many, many studios, many, many scripts, many, many famous actors were going to play, and it all   crashed.

I had given up hope and was like, Oh my gosh, I’m going to die before anything comes of this. But for me, what the movie does, is it informs the general public about an important psychological experience. That’s where the media connects this experience with the general public, and in this movie it does it as good as can be. I was on the set for some of the shooting, so I feel like I had a really positive involvement in it. It is a really disturbing movie, but the hope is that people will come away asking important questions about themselves and human nature. What kind of guard would I have been? What kind of prisoner? How could people do this, what are other situations in everyday life where people do this? It is really about abuse of power, so you want people to ask what happens when people get in positions of power, like a boss; it makes you think about bullies. It ought to trigger lots of reflection as well as stress. Is it an accurate representation of what happened that weekend?   It’s at least 90 percent exactly right on. There are a few scenes that moved around. But nothing is added in the movie that wasn’t in the   study. 

Was it an accurate portrayal of yourself? The portrayal was very accurate; it was painfully accurate, and it revived my guilt for allowing the experiment to go on too long. I should have ended it after the second day, after the second prisoner broke down, but he is me, if anything he is a more intense me, but Billy Crudup is also playing an academic professor. He’s even more serious than I am or was. But it was eye opening. It is like opening a wound from 44 years   ago. 

What’s still relevant today about the experiment?   It’s an experiment about human nature, but it’s about asking what would you do if you had total power over someone else. What would you do if people were dominating you and you were in a group? How would you organize the prisoners to rebel against the guards. But it’s relevant in the situation in New York and how guards treated prisoners at Rikers Island; it is relevant for retraining police officers to be aware of their bias; and it really ought to reform changes in the correctional system. We have 2 million citizens in prison — more than twice as much as any nation in the world. Citizens pay millions of dollars in taxes for a system that doesn’t work. I hope it will trigger ideas about what’s happening in our prisons, or in our   schools.

This interview has been   edited.

• philip zimbardo
• the stanford prison experiment
• social psychology
• science of us

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Sundance Film Review: ‘The Stanford Prison Experiment’

Billy Crudup plays psychologist Philip Zimbardo in this by turns gripping, tedious and deliberately discomfiting re-creation of a notorious 1971 prison simulation.

By Justin Chang

Justin Chang

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An elaborate behavioral simulation spirals shockingly out of control — and to a lesser degree, so does the movie — in “ The Stanford Prison Experiment ,” a grimly staged dramatic reconstruction of Philip Zimbardo’s notorious 1971 scientific inquiry into the psychology of power and the human capacity for inflicting and accepting abuse. In an ambitious step up from his intimate character studies “Easier With Practice” and “C.O.G.,” director Kyle Patrick Alvarez commits to a fully immersive procedural approach that potently conveys the study’s lengthy duration and claustrophobic intensity, making for a viewing experience that is by turns gripping, tedious and deliberately discomfiting. But for all its bludgeoning effectiveness, the film also manages to be at once heavy-handed in some respects and annoyingly vague in others; although sure to have its defenders, it’s probably too strong a dose of foul medicine to catch on significantly with the public.

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Perhaps performing their own sort of audience case study, the directors of the 2015 Sundance Film Festival have programmed a pair of pictures centered around the galvanizing work of two leading social psychologists: Stanley Milgram, the subject of Michael Almereyda’s provocatively form-busting biopic “Experimenter,” and Zimbardo, the not-quite-subject of Alvarez’s more conventional and confrontational third feature. While both scientists have drawn no shortage of criticism for performing controversial experiments that would almost certainly never be allowed today, history has largely vindicated the disturbing relevance of their discoveries about a person’s willingness to inflict pain, whether they’re merely following orders (the 1960s Milgram study) or acting out their designated roles (the Zimbardo experiment). And in the post-Abu Ghraib era — or indeed, any contemporary reality where a uniform and a weapon confer authority — the instructiveness of both films and the studies that inspired them should scarcely be underestimated.

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Adapted from Zimbardo’s 2007 book “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil,” which revisited the discoveries of his famous experiment almost 40 years later, Tim Talbott’s screenplay wastes no time on character backstories or other contextual niceties, opening with the August 1971 auditioning process conducted by Stanford psychology professor Zimbardo ( Billy Crudup ) and his team of researchers. Eighteen male students are screened and selected to play either guards or inmates in the “Stanford County Jail,” the site of a two-week observational study for which they will receive $15 a day. The decision to throw the viewer right in is a shrewd one: We know nothing about these young men (not even their names), making each one that much more chilling a blank slate.

Initially, at least, they all seem like bright, good-humored guys, their laid-back speech and ’70s attire bespeaking a greater affinity with the era’s countercultural ethos than with any sort of fascist tendencies; when asked whether they would prefer to play guards or prisoners, nearly all of them choose the latter. But the power of an artificially imposed scenario, or something so simple as a change of wardrobe, turns out to be more suggestive than even Zimbardo imagines. On day one, the guards, wearing uniforms and intimidating shades, round up their prisoners in a series of mock arrests and lock them in the basement of Stanford’s Jordan Hall — a tight, airless hallway where a few empty classrooms have been converted into cells. There, they order the prisoners to strip naked, spray them with disinfectant, and force them into beige smocks and stocking caps. Even during these early and relatively benign preliminaries, something in the atmosphere has decisively shifted.

Among the guards’ strict orders: Prisoners must remain almost entirely silent, eat at designated mealtimes, and address every guard as “Mr. Correctional Officer.” Failure to obey will, of course, result in punishment. Perhaps the experiment’s most important ground rule is that participants are forbidden from physically assaulting each other, though that doesn’t stop the guards from barking orders at the top of their lungs, or slamming their nightsticks against the walls and cell bars (every loud crack registers with visceral force in the excellent sound design) in response to even the slightest infraction. And it doesn’t take long for the half-naked prisoners to protest when they’re regularly trotted out of their cells for any number of humiliating activities, or roused in the middle of the night for exhausting group exercises. Two of the more rebellious inmates, known only as No. 8612 (Ezra Miller) and No. 819 (Tye Sheridan), attempt to fight back and establish solidarity with their fellow inmates, and are forced to spend long periods of time in a dark closet referred to as “the hole” as a consequence.

“Aren’t these guys taking this a bit too seriously?” one guy asks at one point. It’s a question that rebounds uncomfortably not only on the prisoners, but also on Zimbardo and his collaborators, who watch on ever-present surveillance cameras as their simulation disintegrates, over just a few days, into a circus of degradation and a possibly enormous liability. The less controlled the experiment, of course, the more potentially revealing it becomes, underlining the notion that the study of behavior is worthless unless it can push into the more extreme gray zones of human experience.

Alvarez proves highly attentive to the tricky legal, ethical and scientific minefield that Zimbardo must navigate as various prisoners try to either escape or make their case before a faux parole board, at which point all parties involved seem to enter into an almost surreal realm of situational make-believe. That’s especially true of Jesse Fletcher (the excellent Nelsan Ellis, “Get On Up”), an ex-con who spent 17 years in San Quentin and is brought in to help enforce and legitimize the experiment. It’s also true of Zimbardo, who stubbornly presses on with the experiment and brooks no dissent from anyone — not even Christina Maslach (Olivia Thirlby), a much younger student-turned-love interest, whose words of protest fall on deaf ears.

Strictly on a technical level, Alvarez’s filmmaking is largely faultless here. D.p. Jas Shelton’s use of widescreen expertly captures the tense group dynamics at play and the often-violent choreography of bodies within the frame, and his camera manages to find dynamic angles on the action while crucially conveying the suffocating sense of a locked-in environment. (Anytime the film moves outside the mock-prison setting, sparely appointed by production designer Gary Barbosa, the sense of relief is almost physically palpable.) And Andrew Hewitt’s score, by turns churning and ominous, adds a necessary jolt of momentum that keeps the proceedings from becoming as clinical as the context might demand.

At a certain point, however, the combination of relentless forward drive and gruesomely fastidious detail, while audacious and admirable in theory, begins to pay dwindling returns in a picture that feels rather longer than its 122-minute running time. Not unlike the study from which it derives its title, “The Stanford Prison Experiment” is an endurance test by design; to say that it’s often hell to sit through may be more of an objective observation than a legitimate complaint. The problem is not that this film is upsetting (it should be), but that it ultimately seems more interested in, and skilled at, dispensing regular shocks than fresh insights.

Alvarez himself has demonstrated a certain playful, almost experimental mindset toward his previous male protagonists (the relationally stunted hero of “Easier With Practice,” the young man torn between homosexuality and Christianity in “C.O.G.”), placing them in a series of increasingly uncomfortable scenarios, and monitoring their emotional progress with a detachment that didn’t necessarily preclude affection. He elicits excellent performances here from a sprawling ensemble with no shortage of standouts: Miller, unsurprisingly, shows a terrifying level of commitment to his role as one of the experiment’s most vocal protestors, while Michael Angarano is ferocious as the lead guard, who plays his designated role with far more sadistic abandon than anyone anticipated. And Chris Sheffield is quietly moving as a gentle prisoner whose principled attempt to hold onto one last shred of his identity becomes a powerfully understated act of defiance.

In the end, however, the picture seems stranded between two irreconcilable impulses: to individuate its characters, but also to treat them as abstract representatives of an all-too-corruptible humanity. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the depiction of Zimbardo himself, who became as dangerously caught up in the experiment as anyone else involved; yet in the aftermath of the whole affair (which was cut short after just six days), he crucially subjected all participants, himself included, to hours of psychological debriefing and a necessary moral reckoning.

The closing titles extol Zimbardo as a landmark figure in psychology — an interpretation that’s almost entirely at odds with Crudup’s performance, which presents the scientist as a nearly cardboard villain: callous, arrogant and almost criminally reckless, a one-man study in authoritarianism run amok. “We have become part of this experiment, whether we like it or not,” one of his collaborators opines, needlessly articulating a point that, like too much in “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” will have long become obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention.

Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (competing), Jan. 26, 2015. Running time: 122 MIN.

• Production: A Sandbar Pictures & Abandon Features presentation in association with Coup d’Etat Films, Vineyard Point Prods. (International sales: UTA, Los Angeles.) Produced by Brent Emery, Lizzie Friedman, Karen Lauder, Greg Little, Lauren Bratman. Executive producers, Katie Leary, Bob Leary, Brian Geraghty. Co-producer, Rachel Lauder. Co-executive producers, Michael Paesano, Eric Alini.
• Crew: Directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez. Screenplay, Tim Talbott, based on the book “The Lucifer Effect” by Philip Zimbardo. Camera (color), Jas Shelton; editor, Fernando Collins; music, Andrew Hewitt; production designer, Gary Barbosa; art director, Andres Cubillan; set decorator, Sandra Skora; costume designer, Lisa Tomczeszyn; sound, Reza Moosavi; supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer, Martyn Zub; stunt coordinator, Lou Simon; associate producers, Laurence Duccheschi, Chris Heltzel, Adam Shazar; assistant director, Jacques Terblanche; casting, Angela Demo, Barbara McCarthy.
• With: Billy Crudup, Michael Angarano, Moises Arias, Nicholas Braun, Gaius Charles, Keir Gilchrist, Ki Hong Lee, Thomas Mann, Ezra Miller, Logan Miller, Tye Sheridan, Johnny Simmons, James Wolk, Olivia Thirlby, Nelsan Ellis, Matt Bennett, Jesse Carere, Brett Davern, James Frecheville, Miles Heizer, Jack Kilmer, Callan McAuliffe, Benedict Samuel, Chris Sheffield, Harrison Thomas.

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The Scariest Movies Based On Real Scientific Experiments

Sometimes science can be scary here are a few of the best movies based on real-life experiments..

Zachary Tomlinson

Source:  prisonexp.org

Some of the scariest stories we know of are that way not because they have the best monsters or the biggest surprises—no, the stories that truly keep us up at night are the ones that actually happened!

SEE ALSO: 11 MOST CONTROVERSIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS IN HISTORY

You don’t have to look far these days to find a horror film that’s been inspired by true events, but today I’d like to bring a different class of movies to mind: ones that were inspired by real SCIENCE! Over the years there have been hundreds of morally dubious intellectuals who performed unethically and at times insane experiments in the pursuit of knowledge. From the atrocities at Unit 731 , to the racist tests of Dr. Marion Sims , and even the disembodied dog heads of Dr. Brukhoneko , science is not always a nice subject.

So, if you find yourself in the mood both to scare yourself and to learn a little something, check out these chilling films based on real-life scientific experiments. 

1. The Stanford Prison Experiment

This 2015 thriller flew somewhat under the radar. But for those who saw it, The Stanford Prison Experiment portrayed a psychological study gone wrong in which college students were split into prisoner and guard groups, then locked in a basement in a simulated prison environment for two weeks.

Things quickly turn dark as the student guards become abusive, along with the overseeing professor himself, as they immerse themselves in their assigned roles. When some of the students begin to suffer psychological meltdowns, the professor is brought back to reality and abruptly stops the entire experiment after only six days. It’s a wild ride of a movie that shows the darkest parts of humanity that can live in all of us, but what makes it really crazy… is that it’s all true!

Professor Philip Zimbardo conceived this experiment in 1971 in an attempt to study the psychological effects of perceived power, what he got was more questions than answers, and left several students with permanent trauma.

If you have ever taken an intro psychology class, you probably talked about this experiment and how the questionable ethics it utilized would lead the entire field to establish guidelines for studies involving human subjects. So at least something good came out of this truly unsettling experiment. 

2. Compliance

This 2012 film is another underappreciated gem. It’s about a fast-food restaurant manager who receives a call from a police officer who says he is at another employee’s home searching it for stolen valuables and needs her to detain the employee and see if the stolen goods are with her.

What follows is a nightmarish descent into madness as the officer pushes the manager to carry out increasingly unlawful and intrusive procedures on the other employee, only for her to eventually discover that the whole thing was a prank from a complete stranger, who just wanted to see how far she would go.

While the story draws a lot from the strip search phone call scam of the 90s, many of its darkest psychological moments (as well as the idea for the scam itself) come straight from the files of what is known as “The Milgram Experiment” which was a study on the obedience to authority figures conducted by Stanley Milgram.

In his experiment, participants were led to believe that they were assisting an unrelated experiment in which they had to administer electric shocks to a “learner” whom they could hear but not see. These fake electric shocks gradually increased to levels that would have been fatal had they been real.

Terrifyingly, Milgram found that a very high proportion of men would fully obey the instructions, albeit reluctantly, even after the apparent “death” of the learner they were electrocuting.

This work made a huge impact on the field and has applicability from the corporate world to the Holocaust, but ultimately the study’s validity was called into question and nowadays the whole setup is deemed as highly immoral for the extreme psychological stress it put the subjects through.

3. Frankenstein

Finally, we come to the one that started it all. The mother of all modern science fiction AND horror: Frankenstein. Most of you are probably familiar with at least the modern idea of Frankenstein: a mad scientist obsessed with death pieces together dead bodies to create a “better” one which he brings to life with the power of electricity.

The details change depending on which retelling you see, but the main idea is the same. It’s a revolutionary and enduring story that has firmly embedded itself into the popular mythology, all of which is made more impressive by the fact that it was conceived by a nineteen-year-old girl in the early 1800s as part of a scary story contest.

Truly Mary Shelly was ahead of her time to create such a gothic and chilling piece of literature. But what makes the story even scarier is that quite a lot of it, in fact, is based in truth.

As it turns out, young Shelly had plenty of real-life inspiration for her tale; up to four different scientists of the era all contributed to the character of Shelley’s own mad scientist, Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Let’s focus on the two most disturbing…

First is Giovanni Aldini, nephew to the slightly more famous Luigi Galvani who discovered bioelectricity and for whom the field of galvanism is named. Aldini saw his uncle’s simple experiments on frog legs and took them to a truly unsettling level. After making a name for himself using electricity to reanimate human limbs, he conducted a famous experiment in 1803 where he hooked up a freshly executed criminal to a giant battery in front of a large audience. The body thrashed and convulsed making it look, as one newspaper reported, “as if the wretched man was on the eve of being restored to life.”

It was a truly nightmare-inducing sight to be sure. And although Aldini’s experiment was treated more like a public spectacle than legitimate science by other researchers, his display still remained a famous event for years after and was certainly influential in Shelly’s writing. 

The other scientist worth mentioning here, and perhaps the most influential on Shelley’s psyche was Johann Konrad Dippel. Dippel was an 18th-century alchemist who did experiments at the real Castle Frankenstein. Like most alchemists, he was interested in finding the Elixir of Life – the magical formula by which immortality would be granted, and it was well-known at the time that his quest for such an elixir led him to perform many dark and wicked experiments.  

It is said that Dippel stole bodies from the castle burial grounds and did many dissections attempting to ascertain the secrets of life. He also tried to reanimate the bodies with various potions and spells but was ultimately unsuccessful… which is probably a good thing. In any case, though his experiments were in vain, his deranged, morally bankrupt, the mad-scientist spirit lives on in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and has become a cultural touchstone the world over.

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The Stanford Prison Experiment

Revisits a landmark experiment with no new hypotheses

Time Out says

Here’s a vivid but crushingly literal dramatisation of an event that appears as a case study in every psychology textbook published in the past 40 years. In the late summer of 1971, US academic Philip Zimbardo (Billy Crudup) designed an experiment in which 24 male students simulated a prison environment for two weeks. The subjects were randomly assigned one of two roles: prisoner or guard. Barely 24 hours passed before violence erupted and the project was cut short after just six days. Adapted from a book Zimbardo wrote in 2007, ‘The Stanford Prison Experiment’ unfolds with all the drama and insight of a Wikipedia page. Despite assembling a top-tier cast of buzzy young talent (including Ezra Miller and Tye Sheridan), the film can’t overcome the feeling that its actors have less conviction in their parts than Zimbardo’s original subjects did. It’s hard to shake the thought that a documentary about the making of this movie would have been a more insightful way of re-examining Zimbardo’s work, particularly as front-page atrocities like Abu Ghraib continue to affirm his findings.

Release Details

• Release date: Friday 10 June 2016
• Duration: 122 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Kyle Patrick Alvarez
• Billy Crudup
• Michael Angarano
• Ezra Miller

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What To Know About The Stanford Prison Experiment

The new movie The Stanford Prison Experiment , which will be released for a limited run in theaters July 17, looks creepily good. The film tells the story of a psychological experiment in which two dozen young men are randomly assigned to roleplay either prisoners or guards in a mock prison setup. It's so unsettling as to seem real — so is The Stanford Prison Experiment is based on a true story ? As any psychology major can tell you, oh, yes, it is.

The film, which features names such as Billy Crudup and Ezra Miller and won multiple awards at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival , is said to be very accurate in representing the events of the original experiment. This can be attributed in part to the fact that experiment researcher Dr. Philip Zimbardo was a consultant on the movie. If you've ever taken a Psych 101 class, you may already be somewhat familiar with Zimbardo and his controversial plan. However, there are a lot of details about the study that aren't common knowledge. Here are a few things you should know about the real Stanford Prison Experiment:

1. The Roles Were Enforced Early On

Although the roles of prisoners and guards were randomly assigned by a coin flip, once subjects had been assigned, they were treated in such a way to reinforce their roles. The goal was to recreate both the physical and psychological feeling of a prison , and so steps were taken to create mindsets in the subjects that were consisted with the roles to which they had been assigned. For example, the "prisoners" were actually picked up from their homes (without prior notification) by police officers, then were strip-searched and forced to don uniforms of loose dresses and caps made from stockings. These measures were taken to induce the feelings of humiliation and emasculation that prisoners have reported experiencing. In contrast, the guards were given costume-like uniforms with nightsticks, whistles, and reflective sunglasses. Although they were not given constant instructions, they were given a basic message: do what you need to keep things under control.

2. Not All Of The Guards Acted The Same Way

Although the basic gist of the story is that "the guards went out of control," it was in fact only a third of the men playing guards who "became tyrannical" in their behavior towards the prisoners. Other guards were described as being "tough but fair," while still others were friendly towards the prisoners and did small favors for them. Zimbardo has noted, however, that none of the "good" guards did anything to stop the experiment or intervene when other guards were mistreating the prisoners. This failure to act on the part of the "good" guards could be seen as even more harmful than the outwardly aggressive behavior, as it helped both perpetuate the prison environment and keep the prisoners docile.

3. The Experiment Couldn't Be Done Today

At the time it was conducted, the experiment met all the criteria to satisfy the American Psychological Association's ethical standards. The study had also been approved by Stanford's Human Subjects Research Committee. However, after the dramatic results of the experiment, the APA's criteria were modified to no longer allow for human-subject simulations like those of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Zimbardo has acknowledged , "No behavioral research that puts people in that kind of setting can ever be done again in America."

4. It's Been The Subject Of Many Movies

In 2001 a German film called Das Experiment was released and claimed to be inspired by the Stanford Prison Experiment . However, the movie portrayed many events — particularly acts of violence — which never occurred during the actual experiment. Dr. Zimbardo said the movie was "irresponsible" for its unrealistic and negative portrayal of psychological research. An American version of The Experiment , however, was made in 2010, starring Adrien Brody (above) which was similarly fictionalized. For viewers seeking more information about the real-life events, though, there is a documentary about the study called Quiet Rage which utilizes real video footage from the experiment as well as interviews with the participants and archival photos.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is an incredibly interesting event in the history of psychological research and raises many questions on the topics of individuality, ethics, and more. I look forward to seeing how the new film brings the study and its findings to life.

Images: IFC Films (4); Stage 6 Film

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The Stanford Prison Experiment

I watched this movie last night and found it quite interesting, has anyone else seen this and would like to discuss?

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