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The Experiment (2010 film) explained

The Experiment is a 2010 American drama thriller film directed by Paul T. Scheuring [1] and starring Adrien Brody , Forest Whitaker , Cam Gigandet , Clifton Collins Jr. , and Maggie Grace , [2] about an experiment which resembles Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment in 1971. [3]

The film is a remake of the 2001 German film Das Experiment , [4] which was directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel . [5]

Volunteers arrive for a psychological study led by Dr. Archaleta (Stevens), among them Travis (Brody), a proud anti-war protester, and Michael Barris (Whitaker), a 42-year-old man who still lives with his domineering mother.

After interviews measuring responses to scenes of violence, a chosen 26 are driven to an isolated prison setting with 24 hour camera coverage. The group is split into six guards and 20 prisoners, thereafter referred to only by number. Travis is assigned as a prisoner (#77), and Barris as a guard. Prisoners are required to fully consume three meals a day, participate in 30 minutes of daily recreation , remain within designated areas, and avoid speaking to guards unless spoken to first. Guards must ensure prisoners obey the rules and deal commensurately with transgressions within 30 minutes. Archaleta stresses that the experiment will end immediately at the first sign of violence or quitting. If all rules are followed for two weeks, each man will be compensated $14,000.

Travis' cellmates are Benjy, a graphic novel ist, and Nix, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood who served prison time before. Barris, concerned that some guards may be capable of violence, tries to dissuade them from aggressive behavior. Instead, the guards grow more forceful to make prisoners 'obey at all costs'. Barris gradually becomes more sadistic. Realizing that the defiant Travis is influencing prisoner dissent, Barris instructs other guards to abduct him, shave his head, and urinate upon him. When Archaleta fails to intervene, Barris reasons that his actions were "commensurate". When fellow guard Bosch dissents, Barris pressures him to continue.

Travis discovers that Benjy, now severely ill, concealed his need for insulin , believing he could cure his diabetes merely through dieting. Bosche tries to help find Benjy's insulin, but is caught by other guards. Barris provides Benjy's insulin, but later has all the guards beat Bosche severely and orders Travis to clean the prison toilets. When Travis taunts Barris, the guards respond by shoving his head into the toilet, nearly drowning him.

One morning during roll call, Travis removes his shirt as a sign of protest, followed by the other prisoners. He climbs up to one of the cameras and demands they be released, but the guards choke him. When Benjy tries to defend Travis, Barris bludgeons him. Guards lock Travis into an old boiler pipe overnight, attack the remaining prisoners, and handcuff each man across the cell doors.

While locked in the boiler, Travis discovers a hidden infrared camera. As his despondency turns to anger, he manages to escape and interrupts a guard’s attempt to rape a prisoner. The intended victim and Travis beat the guard and knock him out before freeing the other prisoners. Finding Benjy dead from his head injury, Travis leads an assault against the guards, chasing them through the building. As the remaining guards try to lift the garage door to escape, Barris tries to keep them in, unwilling to forfeit his power. A vicious brawl ensues with the prisoners overwhelming the guards. Travis personally confronts Barris, who tries to stab him, only for Travis to stop the blade with his bare hand. Shocked by his own actions, Barris allows Travis to beat him to a pulp. Only then does the door open, signaling the end of the experiment.

The group emerges into bright sunlight, and sits on the grass in silence until a bus arrives. Audio news snippets suggest that Archaleta is being tried for manslaughter in Benjy's death. Travis, having received his payment, travels to India to meet his girlfriend.

• Adrien Brody as Travis Cacksmackberg
• Forest Whitaker as Michael Barris
• Cam Gigandet as Chase
• Clifton Collins Jr. as Nix
• Fisher Stevens as Dr. Archaleta
• Maggie Grace as Bay
• Ethan Cohn as Benjy
• Travis Fimmel as Helweg
• David Banner as Bosche
• Jason Lew as Oscar
• Damien Leake as Governor

Notes and References

• http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/7408 BD Horror News – Paul Scheuring to Write and Direct 'The Experiment' Remake
• http://www.joblo.com/index.php?id=29424 First Experiment pics
• http://www.prisonexp.org/ The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment Conducted at Stanford University
• http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/38518/international-one-sheet-the-experiment International One-Sheet: The Experiment
• http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/38481/trailer-the-experiment-redux-slips-online Trailer for The Experiment Redux Slips Online

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The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment

On the morning of August 17, 1971, nine young men in the Palo Alto area received visits from local police officers. While their neighbors looked on, the men were arrested for violating Penal Codes 211 and 459 (armed robbery and burglary), searched, handcuffed, and led into the rear of a waiting police car. The cars took them to a Palo Alto police station, where the men were booked, fingerprinted, moved to a holding cell, and blindfolded. Finally, they were transported to the Stanford County Prison—also known as the Stanford University psychology department.

They were willing participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment, one of the most controversial studies in the history of social psychology. (It’s the subject of a new film of the same name—a drama, not a documentary—starring Billy Crudup, of “Almost Famous,” as the lead investigator, Philip Zimbardo. It opens July 17th.) The study subjects, middle-class college students, had answered a questionnaire about their family backgrounds, physical- and mental-health histories, and social behavior, and had been deemed “normal”; a coin flip divided them into prisoners and guards. According to the lore that’s grown up around the experiment, the guards, with little to no instruction, began humiliating and psychologically abusing the prisoners within twenty-four hours of the study’s start. The prisoners, in turn, became submissive and depersonalized, taking the abuse and saying little in protest. The behavior of all involved was so extreme that the experiment, which was meant to last two weeks, was terminated after six days.

Less than a decade earlier, the Milgram obedience study had shown that ordinary people, if encouraged by an authority figure, were willing to shock their fellow-citizens with what they believed to be painful and potentially lethal levels of electricity. To many, the Stanford experiment underscored those findings, revealing the ease with which regular people, if given too much power, could transform into ruthless oppressors. Today, more than forty-five years later, many look to the study to make sense of events like the behavior of the guards at Abu Ghraib and America’s epidemic of police brutality. The Stanford Prison Experiment is cited as evidence of the atavistic impulses that lurk within us all; it’s said to show that, with a little nudge, we could all become tyrants.

And yet the lessons of the Stanford Prison Experiment aren’t so clear-cut. From the beginning, the study has been haunted by ambiguity. Even as it suggests that ordinary people harbor ugly potentialities, it also testifies to the way our circumstances shape our behavior. Was the study about our individual fallibility, or about broken institutions? Were its findings about prisons, specifically, or about life in general? What did the Stanford Prison Experiment really show?

The appeal of the experiment has a lot to do with its apparently simple setup: prisoners, guards, a fake jail, and some ground rules. But, in reality, the Stanford County Prison was a heavily manipulated environment, and the guards and prisoners acted in ways that were largely predetermined by how their roles were presented. To understand the meaning of the experiment, you have to understand that it wasn’t a blank slate; from the start, its goal was to evoke the experience of working and living in a brutal jail.

From the first, the guards’ priorities were set by Zimbardo. In a presentation to his Stanford colleagues shortly after the study’s conclusion, he described the procedures surrounding each prisoner’s arrival: each man was stripped and searched, “deloused,” and then given a uniform—a numbered gown, which Zimbardo called a “dress,” with a heavy bolted chain near the ankle, loose-fitting rubber sandals, and a cap made from a woman’s nylon stocking. “Real male prisoners don't wear dresses,” Zimbardo explained, “but real male prisoners, we have learned, do feel humiliated, do feel emasculated, and we thought we could produce the same effects very quickly by putting men in a dress without any underclothes.” The stocking caps were in lieu of shaving the prisoner’s heads. (The guards wore khaki uniforms and were given whistles, nightsticks, and mirrored sunglasses inspired by a prison guard in the movie “Cool Hand Luke.”)

Often, the guards operated without explicit, moment-to-moment instructions. But that didn’t mean that they were fully autonomous: Zimbardo himself took part in the experiment, playing the role of the prison superintendent. (The prison’s “warden” was also a researcher.) /Occasionally, disputes between prisoner and guards got out of hand, violating an explicit injunction against physical force that both prisoners and guards had read prior to enrolling in the study. When the “superintendent” and “warden” overlooked these incidents, the message to the guards was clear: all is well; keep going as you are. The participants knew that an audience was watching, and so a lack of feedback could be read as tacit approval. And the sense of being watched may also have encouraged them to perform. Dave Eshelman, one of the guards, recalled that he “consciously created” his guard persona. “I was in all kinds of drama productions in high school and college. It was something I was very familiar with: to take on another personality before you step out on the stage,” Eshelman said. In fact, he continued, “I was kind of running my own experiment in there, by saying, ‘How far can I push these things and how much abuse will these people take before they say, ‘Knock it off?’ ”

Other, more subtle factors also shaped the experiment. It’s often said that the study participants were ordinary guys—and they were, indeed, determined to be “normal” and healthy by a battery of tests. But they were also a self-selected group who responded to a newspaper advertisement seeking volunteers for “a psychological study of prison life.” In a 2007 study, the psychologists Thomas Carnahan and Sam McFarland asked whether that wording itself may have stacked the odds. They recreated the original ad, and then ran a separate ad omitting the phrase “prison life.” They found that the people who responded to the two ads scored differently on a set of psychological tests. Those who thought that they would be participating in a prison study had significantly higher levels of aggressiveness, authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and social dominance, and they scored lower on measures of empathy and altruism.

Moreover, even within that self-selected sample, behavioral patterns were far from homogeneous. Much of the study’s cachet depends on the idea that the students responded en masse, giving up their individual identities to become submissive “prisoners” and tyrannical “guards.” But, in fact, the participants responded to the prison environment in all sorts of ways. While some guard shifts were especially cruel, others remained humane. Many of the supposedly passive prisoners rebelled. Richard Yacco, a prisoner, remembered “resisting what one guard was telling me to do and being willing to go into solitary confinement. As prisoners, we developed solidarity—we realized that we could join together and do passive resistance and cause some problems.”

What emerges from these details isn’t a perfectly lucid photograph but an ambiguous watercolor. While it’s true that some guards and prisoners behaved in alarming ways, it’s also the case that their environment was designed to encourage—and, in some cases, to require—those behaviors. Zimbardo himself has always been forthcoming about the details and the nature of his prison experiment: he thoroughly explained the setup in his original study and, in an early write-up , in which the experiment was described in broad strokes only, he pointed out that only “about a third of the guards became tyrannical in their arbitrary use of power.” (That’s about four people in total.) So how did the myth of the Stanford Prison Experiment—“Lord of the Flies” in the psych lab—come to diverge so profoundly from the reality?

In part, Zimbardo’s earliest statements about the experiment are to blame. In October, 1971, soon after the study’s completion—and before a single methodologically and analytically rigorous result had been published—Zimbardo was asked to testify before Congress about prison reform. His dramatic testimony , even as it clearly explained how the experiment worked, also allowed listeners to overlook how coercive the environment really was. He described the study as “an attempt to understand just what it means psychologically to be a prisoner or a prison guard.” But he also emphasized that the students in the study had been “the cream of the crop of this generation,” and said that the guards were given no specific instructions, and left free to make “up their own rules for maintaining law, order, and respect.” In explaining the results, he said that the “majority” of participants found themselves “no longer able to clearly differentiate between role-playing and self,” and that, in the six days the study took to unfold, “the experience of imprisonment undid, although temporarily, a lifetime of learning; human values were suspended, self-concepts were challenged, and the ugliest, most base, pathological side of human nature surfaced.” In describing another, related study and its implications for prison life, he said that “the mere act of assigning labels to people, calling some people prisoners and others guards, is sufficient to elicit pathological behavior.”

Zimbardo released video to NBC, which ran a feature on November 26, 1971. An article ran in the Times Magazine in April of 1973. In various ways, these accounts reiterated the claim that relatively small changes in circumstances could turn the best and brightest into monsters or depersonalized serfs. By the time Zimbardo published a formal paper about the study , in a 1973 issue of the International Journal of Crim__i__nology and Penology , a streamlined and unequivocal version of events had become entrenched in the national consciousness—so much so that a 1975 methodological critique fell largely on deaf ears.

Forty years later, Zimbardo still doesn’t shy away from popular attention. He served as a consultant on the new film, which follows his original study in detail, relying on direct transcripts from the experimental recordings and taking few dramatic liberties. In many ways, the film is critical of the study: Crudup plays Zimbardo as an overzealous researcher overstepping his bounds, trying to create a very specific outcome among the students he observes. The filmmakers even underscore the flimsiness of the experimental design, inserting characters who point out that Zimbardo is not a disinterested observer. They highlight a real-life conversation in which another psychologist asks Zimbardo whether he has an “independent variable.” In describing the study to his Stanford colleagues shortly after it ended, Zimbardo recalled that conversation: “To my surprise, I got really angry at him,” he said. “The security of my men and the stability of my prison was at stake, and I have to contend with this bleeding-heart, liberal, academic, effete dingdong whose only concern was for a ridiculous thing like an independent variable. The next thing he’d be asking me about was rehabilitation programs, the dummy! It wasn’t until sometime later that I realized how far into the experiment I was at that point.”

In a broad sense, the film reaffirms the opinion of John Mark, one of the guards, who, looking back, has said that Zimbardo’s interpretation of events was too shaped by his expectations to be meaningful: “He wanted to be able to say that college students, people from middle-class backgrounds ... will turn on each other just because they’re given a role and given power. Based on my experience, and what I saw and what I felt, I think that was a real stretch.”

If the Stanford Prison Experiment had simulated a less brutal environment, would the prisoners and guards have acted differently? In December, 2001 , two psychologists, Stephen Reicher and Alexander Haslam, tried to find out. They worked with the documentaries unit of the BBC to partially recreate Zimbardo’s setup over the course of an eight-day experiment. Their guards also had uniforms, and were given latitude to dole out rewards and punishments; their prisoners were placed in three-person cells that followed the layout of the Stanford County Jail almost exactly. The main difference was that, in this prison, the preset expectations were gone. The guards were asked to come up with rules prior to the prisoners’ arrival, and were told only to make the prison run smoothly. (The BBC Prison Study, as it came to be called, differed from the Stanford experiment in a few other ways, including prisoner dress; for a while, moreover, the prisoners were told that they could become guards through good behavior, although, on the third day, that offer was revoked, and the roles were made permanent.)

Within the first few days of the BBC study, it became clear that the guards weren’t cohering as a group. “Several guards were wary of assuming and exerting their authority,” the researchers wrote. The prisoners, on the other hand, developed a collective identity. In a change from the Stanford study, the psychologists asked each participant to complete a daily survey that measured the degree to which he felt solidarity with his group; it showed that, as the guards grew further apart, the prisoners were growing closer together. On the fourth day, three cellmates decided to test their luck. At lunchtime, one threw his plate down and demanded better food, another asked to smoke, and the third asked for medical attention for a blister on his foot. The guards became disorganized; one even offered the smoker a cigarette. Reicher and Haslam reported that, after the prisoners returned to their cells, they “literally danced with joy.” (“That was fucking sweet,” one prisoner remarked.) Soon, more prisoners began to challenge the guards. They acted out during roll call, complained about the food, and talked back. At the end of the sixth day, the three insubordinate cellmates broke out and occupied the guards’ quarters. “At this point,” the researchers wrote, “the guards’ regime was seen by all to be unworkable and at an end.”

Taken together, these two studies don’t suggest that we all have an innate capacity for tyranny or victimhood. Instead, they suggest that our behavior largely conforms to our preconceived expectations. All else being equal, we act as we think we’re expected to act—especially if that expectation comes from above. Suggest, as the Stanford setup did, that we should behave in stereotypical tough-guard fashion, and we strive to fit that role. Tell us, as the BBC experimenters did, that we shouldn’t give up hope of social mobility, and we act accordingly.

This understanding might seem to diminish the power of the Stanford Prison Experiment. But, in fact, it sharpens and clarifies the study’s meaning. Last weekend brought the tragic news of Kalief Browder’s suicide . At sixteen, Browder was arrested, in the Bronx, for allegedly stealing a backpack; after the arrest, he was imprisoned at Rikers for three years without trial . (Ultimately, the case against him was dismissed.) While at Rikers, Browder was the object of violence from both prisoners and guards, some of which was captured on video . It’s possible to think that prisons are the way they are because human nature tends toward the pathological. But the Stanford Prison Experiment suggests that extreme behavior flows from extreme institutions. Prisons aren’t blank slates. Guards do indeed self-select into their jobs, as Zimbardo’s students self-selected into a study of prison life. Like Zimbardo’s men, they are bombarded with expectations from the first and shaped by preëxisting norms and patterns of behavior. The lesson of Stanford isn’t that any random human being is capable of descending into sadism and tyranny. It’s that certain institutions and environments demand those behaviors—and, perhaps, can change them.

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The Stanford Prison Experiment

• Participants
• Setting and Procedure

In August of 1971, psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues created an experiment to determine the impacts of being a prisoner or prison guard. The Stanford Prison Experiment, also known as the Zimbardo Prison Experiment, went on to become one of the best-known studies in psychology's history —and one of the most controversial.

This study has long been a staple in textbooks, articles, psychology classes, and even movies. Learn what it entailed, what was learned, and the criticisms that have called the experiment's scientific merits and value into question.

Purpose of the Stanford Prison Experiment

Zimbardo was a former classmate of the psychologist Stanley Milgram . Milgram is best known for his famous obedience experiment , and Zimbardo was interested in expanding upon Milgram's research. He wanted to further investigate the impact of situational variables on human behavior.

Specifically, the researchers wanted to know how participants would react when placed in a simulated prison environment. They wondered if physically and psychologically healthy people who knew they were participating in an experiment would change their behavior in a prison-like setting.

Participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment

To carry out the experiment, researchers set up a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University's psychology building. They then selected 24 undergraduate students to play the roles of both prisoners and guards.

Participants were chosen from a larger group of 70 volunteers based on having no criminal background, no psychological issues , and no significant medical conditions. Each volunteer agreed to participate in the Stanford Prison Experiment for one to two weeks in exchange for $15 a day.

Setting and Procedures

The simulated prison included three six-by-nine-foot prison cells. Each cell held three prisoners and included three cots. Other rooms across from the cells were utilized for the jail guards and warden. One tiny space was designated as the solitary confinement room, and yet another small room served as the prison yard.

The 24 volunteers were randomly assigned to either the prisoner or guard group. Prisoners were to remain in the mock prison 24 hours a day during the study. Guards were assigned to work in three-man teams for eight-hour shifts. After each shift, they were allowed to return to their homes until their next shift.

Researchers were able to observe the behavior of the prisoners and guards using hidden cameras and microphones.

Results of the Stanford Prison Experiment

So what happened in the Zimbardo experiment? While originally slated to last 14 days, it had to be stopped after just six due to what was happening to the student participants. The guards became abusive and the prisoners began to show signs of extreme stress and anxiety .

It was noted that:

• While the prisoners and guards were allowed to interact in any way they wanted, the interactions were hostile or even dehumanizing.
• The guards began to become aggressive and abusive toward the prisoners while the prisoners became passive and depressed.
• Five of the prisoners began to experience severe negative emotions , including crying and acute anxiety, and had to be released from the study early.

Even the researchers themselves began to lose sight of the reality of the situation. Zimbardo, who acted as the prison warden, overlooked the abusive behavior of the jail guards until graduate student Christina Maslach voiced objections to the conditions in the simulated prison and the morality of continuing the experiment.

One possible explanation for the results of this experiment is the idea of deindividuation , which states that being part of a large group can make us more likely to perform behaviors we would otherwise not do on our own.

Impact of the Zimbardo Prison Experiment

The experiment became famous and was widely cited in textbooks and other publications. According to Zimbardo and his colleagues, the Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrated the powerful role that the situation can play in human behavior.

Because the guards were placed in a position of power, they began to behave in ways they would not usually act in their everyday lives or other situations. The prisoners, placed in a situation where they had no real control , became submissive and depressed.

In 2011, the Stanford Alumni Magazine featured a retrospective of the Stanford Prison Experiment in honor of the experiment’s 40th anniversary. The article contained interviews with several people involved, including Zimbardo and other researchers as well as some of the participants.

In the interviews, Richard Yacco, one of the prisoners in the experiment, suggested that the experiment demonstrated the power that societal roles and expectations can play in a person's behavior.

In 2015, the experiment became the topic of a feature film titled The Stanford Prison Experiment that dramatized the events of the 1971 study.

Criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment

In the years since the experiment was conducted, there have been a number of critiques of the study. Some of these include:

Ethical Issues

The Stanford Prison Experiment is frequently cited as an example of unethical research. It could not be replicated by researchers today because it fails to meet the standards established by numerous ethical codes, including the Code of Ethics of the American Psychological Association .

Why was Zimbardo's experiment unethical?

Zimbardo's experiment was unethical due to a lack of fully informed consent, abuse of participants, and lack of appropriate debriefings. More recent findings suggest there were other significant ethical issues that compromise the experiment's scientific standing, including the fact that experimenters may have encouraged abusive behaviors.

Lack of Generalizability

Other critics suggest that the study lacks generalizability due to a variety of factors. The unrepresentative sample of participants (mostly white and middle-class males) makes it difficult to apply the results to a wider population.

Lack of Realism

The Zimbardo Prison Experiment is also criticized for its lack of ecological validity. Ecological validity refers to the degree of realism with which a simulated experimental setup matches the real-world situation it seeks to emulate.

While the researchers did their best to recreate a prison setting, it is simply not possible to perfectly mimic all the environmental and situational variables of prison life. Because there may have been factors related to the setting and situation that influenced how the participants behaved, it may not truly represent what might happen outside of the lab.

Recent Criticisms

More recent examination of the experiment's archives and interviews with participants have revealed major issues with the research method , design, and procedures used. Together, these call the study's validity, value, and even authenticity into question.

These reports, including examinations of the study's records and new interviews with participants, have also cast doubt on some of its key findings and assumptions.

Among the issues described:

• One participant suggested that he faked a breakdown so he could leave the experiment because he was worried about failing his classes.
• Other participants also reported altering their behavior in a way designed to "help" the experiment .
• Evidence suggests that the experimenters encouraged the guards' behavior and played a role in fostering the abusive actions of the guards.

In 2019, the journal American Psychologist published an article debunking the famed experiment. It detailed the study's lack of scientific merit and concluded that the Stanford Prison Experiment was "an incredibly flawed study that should have died an early death."

In a statement posted on the experiment's official website, Zimbardo maintains that these criticisms do not undermine the main conclusion of the study—that situational forces can alter individual actions both in positive and negative ways.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is well known both inside and outside the field of psychology . While the study has long been criticized for many reasons, more recent criticisms of the study's procedures shine a brighter light on the experiment's scientific shortcomings.

Stanford University. About the Stanford Prison Experiment .

Stanford Prison Experiment. 2. Setting up .

Sommers T. An interview with Philip Zimbardo . The Believer.

Ratnesar R. The menace within . Stanford Magazine.

Jabbar A, Muazzam A, Sadaqat S. An unveiling the ethical quandaries: A critical analysis of the Stanford Prison Experiment as a mirror of Pakistani society . J Bus Manage Res . 2024;3(1):629-638.

Horn S. Landmark Stanford Prison Experiment criticized as a sham . Prison Legal News .

Bartels JM. The Stanford Prison Experiment in introductory psychology textbooks: A content analysis .  Psychol Learn Teach . 2015;14(1):36-50. doi:10.1177/1475725714568007

American Psychological Association. Ecological validity .

Blum B. The lifespan of a lie . Medium .

Le Texier T. Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment . Am Psychol . 2019;74(7):823-839. doi:10.1037/amp0000401

Stanford Prison Experiment. Philip Zimbardo's response to recent criticisms of the Stanford Prison Experiment .

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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

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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 Experiment

• For two weeks, 20 male participants are hired to play prisoners and guards in a prison. The "prisoners" have to follow seemingly mild rules, and the "guards" are told to retain order without using physical violence.
• The movie is based on the infamous "Stanford Prison Experiment" conducted in 1971. A makeshift prison is set up in a research lab, complete with cells, bars and surveillance cameras. For two weeks 20 male participants are hired to play prisoners and guards. The 'prisoners' are locked up and have to follow seemingly mild rules, and the 'guards' are told simply to retain order without using physical violence. Everybody is free to quit at any time, thereby forfeiting payment. In the beginning the mood between both groups is insecure and rather emphatic. But soon quarrels arise and the wardens employ ever more drastic sanctions to confirm their authority. — <[email protected]>
• 20 male participants take part in a social experiment. For two weeks they will be housed in a prison, with a portion of them being guards and the remainder prisoners. Initially things go well, but after a while matters relations start to deteriorate. — grantss
• In need of extra cash, the part-time taxi driver, Tarek Fahd, volunteers to take part in a controversial social experiment which aims at faithfully reconstructing the psychology of prison life. In the following two weeks, within the walls of a controlled makeshift prison, twelve randomly chosen men are assigned to become prisoners--losing their clothing, their identities, and their civil rights--while eight other volunteers become uniformed guards equipped with billy clubs, to maintain peace and order. However, what started as an ambitious investigation into human behaviour, rapidly escalates into a dangerously volatile situation, as the first signs of conscious violence appear only two days into the experiment. Now, Tarek, or Prisoner #77, and the rest of the inmates have become real convicts. Are they strong enough to overcome their limits? — Nick Riganas
• In a newspaper advertisement, taxi driver Tarek Fahd discovers an invitation to participate in an experiment. 4000 German marks are offered to the participants of the experiment, in which a prison situation is simulated. The experiment is led by Professor Klaus Thon and his assistant, Dr. Jutta Grimm. Tarek participates as a journalist while wearing a pair of glasses with a built-in mini-camera. Tarek has a car accident shortly before the experiment, after which he meets a woman called Dora. She spends the night with him and Tarek keeps thinking of her, shown in flashbacks. The 20 volunteers are pronounced guards and prisoners and are being observed by a team of scientists. The prisoners lose their civil rights and have to obey arbitrary rules, such as completely eating their meals. The guards are given nightsticks but are told not to use violence in any case. Each prisoners name is taken away and replaced by a number. Tarek (prisoner nr. 77) initially refuses to acknowledge the guards' superiority by drinking the milk of one of his co-prisoners because of that prisoner's lactose intolerance or by throwing his blanket out of his cell to provoke the guards. He befriends his cellmates, Steinhoff and Schütte. Psychological changes develop and the situation deteriorates. The circumstances seem to be escalating after a few days. It becomes clear that limits are not only being reached but being surpassed. The guards become excessively aware of their power and use the prisoners' fear to make them obedient. On both sides, one person is considered dominant. On the prisoners' side, this is Tarek, and aon the guards side, it is the quiet guard Berus, a sadist, whose motto during the experiment is: "Humiliation is the only way we can solve these troubles." From that moment, the guards start to use more and more violence against the prisoners. The scientists engage in a discussion whether or not to abort the experiment. Dr. Grimm suggests to put an end to the alarming situation, but Professor Thon refuses to stop the experiment until the violence has reached a maximum. Dora meanwhile returns to Tarek's apartment and discovers his participation contract for the experiment. She surprises him by showing up for a visit day. Tarek pleads to the friendly guard Walther Bosch to secretly bring her a message. Berus suspects him, however. He arrests Bosch and tells Dora that everything is alright. The situation becomes critical and more violence is involved. The prisoners are being abused and their self-esteem is drastically decreased. Most of the violence is against Tarek. First, the guards kidnap him from his cell late one night, order him to strip fully naked, shave his head bald and urinate on him. Later he is forced to clean the toilet with his own clothes. In the end, they lock him up in solitary confinement inside a "black box" resembling a safe. Schütte, reacting to this, is beaten severely, tied up, his mouth bound with duct tape and set on a chair. Later he suffocates to death due to his bloody nose drying up in addition to the duct tape on his mouth. Bosch is beaten by the other guards for his "betrayal" and is put into prison. A scientist called Lars notices this and attempts to contact Professor Thon. The guards, who are aware that the professor cannot be reached, are convinced by Berus that the entire situation is a test, in which they want to see their reaction. They take over control of the facility and capture Lars, Dr. Grimm and the other scientists after which they are put into prison as well. Dora comes to the facility a second time to speak to Tarek and is lured into a room by Berus, where he locks her up. The guard Eckert attempts to rape Dr. Grimm until Tarek stops him after he escapes out of the solitary confinement through the use of a screwdriver he found inside the "black box." Tarek knocks down Eckert and frees Lars, Bosch, Steinhoff, Dr. Grimm and the other prisoners. They manage to escape by removing one of the plates at the wall of one of the cells with the screwdrivers and flee. Meanwhile, Professor Thon hears Lars' desperate message in his voice mail and leaves for the facility. Steinhoff and Tarek stay behind to lock the way back in order to prevent Berus from coming after them. Professor Thon reaches the facility and demands an explanation from Eckert, after which the latter injures him by accident with a pistol. The fleeing prisoners are ambushed by the guards and trapped. Bosch, who could not keep up with the others, loses his sanity and kills Eckert with a fire extinguisher. Dora then escapes out of the room she was locked up in, and steals Eckert's gun. She injures one of the guards fighting Tarek and Steinhoff, leaving only Berus to fight them. Tarek incapacitates Berus, who is nearly choked to death by Steinhoff until Tarek convinces him not to kill Berus. The movie ends with a news break, confirming two deaths (Schütte and Eckert) and three injured (Thon and two others). Both Berus and Thon will be put on trial. In this movie appears Christian Berkel who will later play the role of Fritz Shimon Haber in Haber (2008) .

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The Experiment

Review by brian eggert september 22, 2010.

The Experiment is the latest casualty from Hollywood’s increasingly gutless approach to marketing. Independently financed, the film required only a distributor, but because the major studios shy away from taking risks these days, it failed to find a home until Sony acquired it for home video. Studios are more interested in sure things: remakes, sequels, prequels, name-brand recognition, and formulaic genres proven to be profitable. It’s all the more curious that no one jumped at this film, being based on the 2001’s Das Experiment by German filmmaker Oliver Hirschbiegel, which in turn was based on the novel Black Box by Mario Giordano. But the high-concept plot likely proved too much for Hollywood’s ever-lazy advertising gurus.

Said plot involves volunteers that answer an ad seeking subjects for experimentation. Trials will last two weeks and pay $14,000 after the period is over, but subjects are warned by the primary scientist (Fisher Stevens) that the experiment simulates the conditions of a penitentiary, and the civil rights of many volunteers will be taken away. Most of the subjects, all men, are jobless and desperate, so they agree. They’re driven by bus to a facility in the middle of endless corn fields and separated into two groups, guards and prisoners. The guards are given a list of five crucial rules, which they cruelly choose not to share with the prisoners: 1. Prisoners must have 3 meals a day, plates totally clean; 2. Prisoners get 30 min. of recreation per day; 3. Prisoners can only be in prisoner-designated areas; 4. Prisoners must only speak only when spoken to; 5. Prisoners are not allowed to touch the guards.

Self-styled leader of the prisoners, the unemployed activist Travis (Adrien Brody), believes in pacifism; whereas the straight-laced leader of the guards, Barris (Forest Whitaker), believes in god-fearing order. And when Barris’ sense of regulation quickly becomes too dogmatic for Travis, who simply asks for a little human understanding in an experiment that everyone knows isn’t real, he rebels. Barris and his team of guards are not allowed to directly harm the prisoners; if they do, the Red Light flashes and marks the premature end of the experiment, thus no payday. So the guards resolve to humiliate Travis and the other misbehavers. First punishments come by way of pushups. Then sprays with fire extinguishers. Soon they’re shaving Travis’ head, urinating on him, and giving him a swirly in a fecal-ridden toilet. Meanwhile, there’s a hackneyed subplot involving a diabetic graphic novelist (Ethan Cohn), the chubby nerd of the group that Travis defends because morality demands it. There’s also a creepy, sexually frustrated guard (Cam Gigandet) who sets his sights on an effeminate inmate for the obligatory prison movie rape sequence.

Brody’s year of science-fiction protagonist roles continues here after Splice and Predators ; and The Experiment is just as mildly entertaining if moderately underwhelming as those films, despite the presence of two Oscar-winners in the cast. Brody feels forced as a sympathetic but overwrought activist just trying to earn enough dough to meet his girlfriend (Maggie Grace) in India. Whitaker, however, proves over-the-top as the guard who goes slowly mad after his first dose of erection-inducing power. It takes a shockingly short time for Whitaker’s Barris to unhinge, leaving the audience to pause and wonder why those who conducted the experiment didn’t see his proclivity for mental illness during the interview process. Or perhaps they did. But when Whitaker begins looking obsessively at his master, uttering “The Red Light is the only way that we can know ”, it’s eye-rolling instead of terrifying.

Director Paul Scheuring enters familiar territory, being the creator of Fox’s Prison Break television series. Scheuring doesn’t add much visual ingenuity to the project, relying mostly on his actors and the script’s ideas to pull him through. We’re meant to ask, “At what point does the Red Light come back on and reality sink in? Do the subjects even know the real experiment?” They were told it’s a prison experiment, but there seems to be something more going on when the light doesn’t flash after several borderline incidents, and at least one of the experiment’s participants crosses the line completely. By the finale, Scheuring has asked questions about human nature in a heavy-handed manner that’s nothing less than transparent to the audience.

Making its debut on home video, The Experiment is worth viewing for those unfamiliar with the far superior German film, which avoids the cringe-worthy ‘happy ending’ given here. How can a story about the brutalizing animal instincts and do-what-you’re-told mentality of the human race end happily? Scheuring finds a way. What makes the experience worth a rental are the performances. Brody and Whitaker give enjoyable, if exaggerated, characterizations and Clifton Collins Jr. makes an appearance as the knowing former actual inmate. And the mounting tension does manage to involve the viewer until the scattershot conclusion. Its flaws notwithstanding, this material has the production value of a theatrical release, and studios gave up an easy if small profit by passing on a distribution deal.

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Stanford Prison Experiment

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• BBC News - Stanford prison experiment continues to shock
• Official Site of Stanford Prison Experiment
• Grand Valley State University - Twenty-Five Years after the Stanford Prison Experiment
• American Psychological Association - Demonstrating the Power of Social Situations via a Simulated Prison Experiment
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Stanford Prison Experiment , a social psychology study in which college students became prisoners or guards in a simulated prison environment . The experiment, funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, took place at Stanford University in August 1971. It was intended to measure the effect of role-playing, labeling, and social expectations on behaviour over a period of two weeks. However, mistreatment of prisoners escalated so alarmingly that principal investigator Philip G. Zimbardo terminated the experiment after only six days.

More than 70 young men responded to an advertisement about a “psychological study of prison life,” and experimenters selected 24 applicants who were judged to be physically and mentally healthy. The paid subjects—they received $15 a day—were divided randomly into equal numbers of guards and prisoners. Guards were ordered not to physically abuse prisoners and were issued mirrored sunglasses that prevented any eye contact. Prisoners were “arrested” by actual police and handed over to the experimenters in a mock prison in the basement of a campus building. Prisoners were then subjected to indignities that were intended to simulate the environment of a real-life prison. In keeping with Zimbardo’s intention to create very quickly an “atmosphere of oppression,” each prisoner was made to wear a “dress” as a uniform and to carry a chain padlocked around one ankle. All participants were observed and videotaped by the experimenters.

On only the second day the prisoners staged a rebellion. Guards then worked out a system of rewards and punishments to manage the prisoners. Within the first four days, three prisoners had become so traumatized that they were released. Over the course of the experiment, some of the guards became cruel and tyrannical, while a number of the prisoners became depressed and disoriented. However, only after an outside observer came upon the scene and registered shock did Zimbardo conclude the experiment, less than a week after it had started.

The Stanford Prison Experiment immediately came under attack on methodological and ethical grounds. Zimbardo admitted that during the experiment he had sometimes felt more like a prison superintendent than a research psychologist. Later on, he claimed that the experiment’s “social forces and environmental contingencies” had led the guards to behave badly. However, others claimed that the original advertisement attracted people who were predisposed to authoritarianism . The most conspicuous challenge to the Stanford findings came decades later in the form of the BBC Prison Study, a differently organized experiment documented in a British Broadcasting Corporation series called The Experiment (2002). The BBC’s mock prisoners turned out to be more assertive than Zimbardo’s. The British experimenters called the Stanford experiment “a study of what happens when a powerful authority figure (Zimbardo) imposes tyranny.”

The Stanford Prison Experiment became widely known outside academia . It was the acknowledged inspiration for Das Experiment (2001), a German movie that was remade in the United States as the direct-to-video film The Experiment (2010). The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015) was created with Zimbardo’s active participation; the dramatic film more closely followed actual events.

Experimenter

Orson Welles once described his approach in “ Citizen Kane ” as “prismatic,” and while there are many differences in subject and style between that cinema milestone and Michael Almereyda ’s “Experimenter,” the two films share a multi-faceted formal playfulness and an essential intellectual seriousness that make them similarly bracing, original and thought-provoking. Part of the latter quality comes from their focus on men (one semi-fictional, the other real) who stand at particular junctures of American history and, like prisms, refract converging elements of our national identity and culture.

The most pleasingly cerebral of recent American films, “Experimenter” concerns Dr. Stanley Milgram ( Peter Sarsgaard in an expertly shaded and intelligent performance), the creator of certain enduringly famous experiments in social psychology, which the film starts out by showing us. In a psych lab at Yale University in 1961, Milgram watches from behind a two-way mirror as an associate (John Palladino) escorts two men into a room where he explains the experiment in which they’ve agreed to participate. One man will be called “Learner” and will try to memorize answers to standardized tests. The other man, “Teacher,” will monitor the responses given by Learner (who’s out of sight) and, when he gives wrong answers, give him a series of increasingly strong electric shocks.

The nominal experiment here is a sham. In reality, Learner is not being shocked; an actor, he plays audiotapes of his voice screaming and protesting as the shocks supposedly mount in intensity. The one being tested is Teacher. How long will he go on shocking a stranger who’s begging him to stop? An overwhelming majority of people say they would stop well before the shocks reach maximum intensity. As it happened, though, both in Milgram’s original experiments and in numerous duplications of them, roughly 65 percent of subjects kept applying the shocks till the end; only 35 percent stopped at some point before.

Temporally, the significance of the Milgram Experiments cuts in every direction.

Past: When they were underway, the Israeli trial of Nazi genocide mastermind Adolf Eichmann, who claimed he was only following orders, was on American television. The son of European Jews who escaped the Nazi terror, Milgram wanted to know how ordinary people could do things that violated their conscious principles. And could it be that folks of other nations – even Americans – would submit just as Germans had? The scandalous book in which he revealed his findings was titled “Obedience to Authority.”

Present (1961): In a sense, the Eichmann trial connects the Holocaust to the era of “The Manchurian Candidate,” when Americans were so fearful of their Communist enemies that they questioned their own psychological make-up, and when an academic-scientific-military complex emerged to deal with such concerns. Needless to say, that complex didn’t disappear along with the Soviet Union.

Future: As the film shows, when Milgram’s findings become public, they spark widespread interest, with some hailing their importance while others denounce the scientist’s methods as unethical and manipulative. Their paradoxical importance continues. During the Vietnam War they are invoked to explain the My Lai massacre. Films of them are still shown to West Point cadets. Need their relevance to the post-9/11 American penchant for torture, both military and more broadly cultural, be stated?

Back to those scenes in the Yale lab. In most movies, no doubt, we would be kept in doubt about the experiment’s real nature until we’d seen at least one Learner shocked to the breaking point. But Almereyda tosses away the possibility of suspense and shows us what’s going on from the first. Filmed with a cool, Kubrickian detachment, these scenes align our p.o.v. not with the experiment’s participants’ but with the scientist’s (and by extension, the filmmaker’s). Rather than conventionally dramatic, the effect is wry, inquisitive, even darkly comic.

During this early sequence, Almereyda intercuts scenes of Milgram meeting the dancer ( Winona Ryder ) who will become his wife. These passages announce that “Experimenter” will concern not just the work but also the man. Yet, if this is a biopic, it’s hardly a conventional one. It seems not at all interested in probing Milgram’s psychology, to wonder why he would undertake this type of work. And, in effect, the film’s wife-and-family parts have a basically negative function in that, rather than explaining anything, simply tell us he was a fairly ordinary guy.

So, ultimately, Almereyda’s emphasis falls on his subject’s work and public life. After the famous experiments and the book that followed, Milgram becomes something of a controversial public intellectual, moves to Harvard (then later City University of NY) and concocts other experimental tests of human behavior, some very interesting but none achieving the notoriety of the earlier ones. As the career unfolds, we become aware of how much the academic-scientific-military complex intersects with the nation’s imagination on various pop-cultural fronts. Milgram himself is on television. He engages with “Candid Camera.” He watches CBS turn his life’s work in a bad TV movie, “The Tenth Level,” starring William Shatner and Ossie Davis .

As we see that monstrosity being shot, Milgram muses to the camera about his chagrin. When he thinks of turning his work into a Broadway musical, he bursts into song on a midtown street. All of which points to one of the film’s chief delights: its eclectic mix of formal stratagems and narrative modes. Almereyda has Milgram address the camera frequently, sometimes telling us of things that haven’t yet happened. He uses rear-screen projection (which serves various purposes, including evoking a bygone cinematic era), various surrealistic touches and all manner of distancing devices.  His tone veers from serious to satiric to wacky to contemplative and back to serious, sometimes within a single scene.

The thread that unifies all this, one might venture, has to do with the issue of free will. The upside of Milgram’s experiments (as one of his mentors attempts to point out) was to show that at least a significant minority of people can resist unwarranted social controls. What about trying to construct an educational system and a society that grow that number? Likewise, though many people love to be manipulated by movies, how about asserting the value of works like “Experimenter,” which, in keeping the emotional temperature low and presenting us with a collage of evidence on related subjects, allows us the interpretive freedom to construct its meanings for ourselves?

No doubt, that kind of freedom is only offered us by a certain type of artist, of which Almeredya is a prime and invaluable example. From early in his career, it was clearly that he was an unusually gifted director, yet rather than allowing himself to be sucked into the mainstream moviemaking system, he has deliberately stayed on the intelligent margins, making a range of films from docs to shorts to modern Shakespeare adaptations to works that deserve the designation experimental. In so doing, he has allowed himself a creative freedom that suffuses his latest like a constant stream of mountain air. “Experimenter,” he might say, “c’est moi.”

Godfrey Cheshire

Godfrey Cheshire is a film critic, journalist and filmmaker based in New York City. He has written for The New York Times, Variety, Film Comment, The Village Voice, Interview, Cineaste and other publications.

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The Experiment (2001)

Submitted by salvatore.

Short version: After two days the guards turn violent and dehumanizing towards the inmates. The experiment is never stopped. After six days, a full scale riot breaks out, and the experiment ends. Benjy dies inside, and the lead researcher is convicted of manslaughter. The experiment’s purpose is never explained.In the end, Travis, for no explained reason, moves to India with the girl he met only days ago.

Long version: 26 men sign up for a scientific experiment. All they are told before hand is that some will be stripped of all civil rights, some will not.

When they arrive at the compound, it is revealed that 8 of them will become prison guards, and the other 18 will be inmates and this will last for 14 days. All of the subjects are warned that if there is any physical violence that the experiment will be shut down and everyone will forfeit all of their money (14,000$ for two weeks). The guards are also warned that if an inmate breaks any of the rules enforced on them (clean their plates, don’t talk unless spoken to, exercise for 30 minutes a day, never touch a guard, nothing from the outside world is allowed in) and are not punished for it within 30 minutes, the experiment will end and all money will be forfeit.

Almost immediately, the “don’t touch a guard” rule is broken, and an inmate touches the guard. The experiment is not ended, even after the 30 minutes pass.

Within two days, the guards are doing horrifically cruel things to the inmates. Fearing that they will lose their 14,000$ pay check if there is a riot among the prisoners, they tie Travis (Adrien Brody) to a chair, shave his head, kick him to the ground, then several guards urinate on his face. Despite warnings that if anything violent happens the experiment will end, nothing happens and nobody stops them.

In addition, one of the inmates lied on his application. He has diabetes, and needs insulin. Within two days, he’s beginning to die, but the experiment is not called off and the guards cannot give him the insulin because of the “nothing from outside world is allowed in” rule.

Day four, Travis bribes a guard into trying to steal the insulin from the bag to save the inmate. He does it, but is caught. The guard leader, Barris (Forest Whitaker), allows the dying inmate to have the insulin (once again breaking the rules, and once again nothing happens). They take Travis into the bathroom and constantly dunk his head in the toilet as punishment for trying to bribe a guard.

Day five, the guard that tried to get the insulin has a bag thrown over his head by the other guards and is beaten with batons. Yet again, a rule is broken, and nothing happens. They drag the beaten guard out as an example, showing the inmates that they can use violence and nothing will happen. In addition, he is stripped of his guard status and is made into a prisoner.

The inmates begin to become insubordinate, all of them stripping out of their prisoner uniforms at the same time. Travis yells to a camera that he is finished, but nothing happens. Barris pulls him from the fence and slams him to the ground. Benjy punches Barris in the back of the head, and he responds by clubbing Benjy over the head with the baton, cracking his skull and causing him to begin having a seizure.

All of the inmates are separated and locked in different rooms.

Day six, Travis breaks out of his cell. He finds a guard about to rape am inmate and they knock him out and steal the key. One by one, then run and unlock all the prisoners from their cells. They find Benjy dead.

A full-scale riot starts. Using everything they can get, the inmates begin to break down the door to the guard’s office. All of the remaining guards tell Barris they are done and begin to run for an exit. Barris follows.

All of the inmates catch up with the guards, and begin to beat them. Finally, the alarms go off, signaling the end of the experiment.

All of the fighting immediately stops as the gates are opened, and everyone still alive walks outside and waits for the bus. They are given their $14,000 checks on the bus.

The end of the movie shows that there is a news report on the test. The company had “loose ties to the government,” and Travis was caught on camera saying that they would testify in court. A voice over says that the lead researcher on the project was arrested and charged with manslaughter for the death of Benjy. What the point of the whole experiment was is never revealed at all.

The ending of the movie shows that Travis, for reasons unexplained, has moved to India with the girl he met only days ago at the peace rally.

• Actor: Christian Berkel , Moritz Bleibtreu , Oliver Stokowski , Wotan Wilke Möhring
• Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
• Genre: Drama , Thriller

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• I Still Believe
• I Wanna Dance with Somebody
• Imitation Game, The
• Infiltrator, The
• Inventing Anna
• Irishman, The
• Iron Claw, The
• Jerry and Marge Go Large
• Jersey Boys
• Jesus Revolution
• Jimi: All Is by My Side
• Judas and the Black Messiah
• Kill the Messenger
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• King Arthur
• King Richard
• Lady in the Lake
• Last Duel, The
• Last Full Measure, The
• League of Their Own, A
• Lone Survivor
• Lost City of Z, The
• Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
• Maggie Moore(s)
• Man Who Invented Christmas, The
• Masters of the Air
• Mauritanian, The
• McFarland, USA
• Megan Leavey
• Men of Honor
• Military Wives
• Million Dollar Arm
• Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, The
• Miracles from Heaven
• Molly's Game
• Monuments Men, The
• Mothman Prophecies, The
• Mrs. America
• Munich: The Edge of War
• My All American
• Next Goal Wins
• Not Without My Daughter
• Old Man & the Gun, The
• On a Wing and a Prayer
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
• One and Only Ivan, The
• Only the Brave
• Operation Finale
• Operation Mincemeat
• Oppenheimer
• Ordinary Angels
• Outlaw King
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• Pain & Gain
• Pain Hustlers
• Passion of the Christ, The
• Patch Adams
• Patriots Day
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• Penguin Bloom
• People v. O.J. Simpson, The
• Pianist, The
• Pope's Exorcist, The
• Prayer Before Dawn, A
• Promise, The
• Public Enemies
• Pursuit of Happyness, The
• Queen of Katwe
• Quiet Ones, The
• Railway Man, The
• Remember the Titans
• Rescued by Ruby
• Revenant, The
• Richard Jewell
• Right Stuff, The
• Rookie, The
• Saving Mr. Banks
• Saving Private Ryan
• Schindler's List
• Serpent, The
• Slender Man
• Social Network, The
• Society of the Snow
• Soul Surfer
• Sound of Freedom
• Staircase, The
• Survivor, The
• Tender Bar, The
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The
• Texas Rising
• Theory of Everything, The
• Thing About Pam, The
• Thirteen Lives
• To Write Love on Her Arms
• Top Gun: Maverick
• Trees of Peace
• Trial of the Chicago 7, The
• True Spirit
• United Kingdom, A
• United States vs. Billie Holiday, The
• Unsung Hero
• Upside, The
• Victoria and Abdul
• Walk the Line
• Watcher, The
• We Own This City
• We Were the Lucky Ones
• Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
• Welcome to Marwen
• When the Game Stands Tall
• When They See Us
• White Boy Rick
• White House Plumbers
• Wicked Little Letters
• Wolf of Wall Street, The
• Woman in Gold
• Woman King, The
• Young Woman and the Sea
• Zookeeper's Wife, The

The Quiet Ones: History vs. Hollywood

Is the girl in the movie, Jane Harper, based on a real person?

Did the real experiments take place at Oxford University?

No. The Quiet Ones true story reveals that the real experiments were conducted in Toronto, Canada under the patronage of the Toronto Society for Psychical Research (TSPR), founded in 1970 and not affiliated with a university. The group was led by participant Iris May Owen and was operated under the scientific advisement of her husband, Dr. Alan Robert George Owen (Dr. A.R.G. Owen), a former fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge where he was a professor of mathematics. He had also worked as a lecturer in genetics at Cambridge until 1970, the year he acted on an invitation for his family to immigrate to Canada, where he was to direct the parapsychology research of the Toronto-based New Horizons Research Foundation. Together with his wife Iris Owen, they agreed to conduct full-time research for the foundation for a period of five years. Dr. Owen specialized in psychic research with an emphasis on poltergeists.

What year did the real experiment (the Philip Experiment) take place?

Dr. A.R.G. Owen and the eight participants of the research group began conducting the Philip Experiment in 1972. In the movie, Professor Joseph Coupland (Jared Harris) conducts his experiments in 1974. George Owen's wife, Iris, who was the leader of the group involved in the Philip Experiment, wrote the 1976 book Conjuring Up Philip: An Adventure in Psychokinesis , which chronicled the experiment and its findings in detail. Fellow participant Sue Sparrow was her coauthor.

Who were the members of the real research group?

What was the purpose of the Philip Experiment?

In researching The Quiet Ones true story, we discovered that the purpose of the real experiment was to prove that the supernatural is a manifestation of what already exists in the mind. Proving such a hypothesis true doesn't necessarily mean that ghosts aren't real. It just means that they are created by us, instead of coming from somewhere else. For example, if you grew up fearing that an evil old woman lurks under your bed and will grab your ankles when you step onto the floor, you imagining the woman in detail could be enough to manifest her into an actual demonic spirit. Basically, thinking of a ghost and providing it an identity might be enough to conjure it into existence. Taking that theory even further, the researchers behind the Philip Experiment gave the character they were imagining a full life, including a name, a nationality, a past and a personality. During their séances, they tried to converse with Philip, their once fictional character. They believed that giving Philip such realistic traits and attempting to communicate with him would help to conjure up an actual ghost.

Is Philip, the entity from the real experiment, anything like Evey, the entity in the movie?

Did the professor's son really die in an asylum?

No. Dr. A.R.G. Owen, a former professor of genetics at Cambridge, never had a son who died in an asylum from self-inflicted wounds. Dr. Owen did have a son, Robin E. Owen (born May 21, 1955), who observed and assisted the Philip Experiment as the recorder and photographer. Unlike the professor in the movie, Dr. Owen was trying to help the researchers prove that it's possible for a group of focused participants to create an apparition. In the movie, Professor Joseph Coupland (Jared Harris) plays a more central role and is trying to prove that poltergeists aren't real. He believes they exist solely in the mind of a seemingly possessed subject and are expressed through the negative telekinetic energy projected by the subject. Of course, Coupland eventually discovers he's wrong.

Did they really hold séances to communicate with the entity?

Did the true story involve a cult?

No. Not only didn't the true story behind The Quiet Ones movie involve a girl, it also never involved a devil-worshiping cult, which is part of the girl's past in the movie's story.

Did the real professor use unorthodox methods?

Did the spirit really become violent like in the movie?

No. The spirit of Philip, real or not, never branded members of the team with a demonic symbol, nor did he ever cause their bodies to levitate, slam into doors, etc. The apparition Philip also never caused bathwater to boil, a doll to start burning, a girl to catch on fire or a demonic spirit to spiral out of a possessed girl's mouth (the real Philip never possessed anyone). And as you probably guessed, the alleged ghost Philip never killed people.

Are photos of the real people shown during the movie's end credits?

No. The vintage looking photos shown during the end credits of The Quiet Ones movie are not the real people who inspired the movie's story. The photos, which are fake, are intended to represent real people, but they are actually just actors. As you've probably realized by now, the movie is almost entirely fiction.

Did they really videotape the experiments?

Yes, like in The Quiet Ones movie, the true story confirms that the séances were often filmed. Watch footage from several Philip Experiment séances . Dr. Owen's son, Robin E. Owen, often took the photos and did the filming.

Did the real Quiet Ones experiment work?

If by work, we mean, did the spirit of Philip ever actually materialize? Then, no, the Philip Experiment did not work. However, the Owen group believed that the experiment let them achieve far more than they'ed ever imagined possible.

Is it possible that the Philip Experiment was a hoax?

Have any other experiments been done that were similar to the Philip Experiment?

Yes. The Philip Experiment has been replicated several times. The most notable of these efforts is the Skippy Experiment, sometimes called the "Sydney Experiment," conducted in Sydney, Australia in the 2000s. The researchers devised the story of a 14-year-old girl named Skippy Cartman. She was impregnated by her Catholic schoolteacher, who later murdered her so the church wouldn't find out. After the initial table used by the researchers didn't produce any results, they found success sitting around a light, three-legged card table. They reported similar knocking and scratching sounds heard during the Philip Experiment. They also said that the table moved and spun around on one leg. However, they never managed to capture any audio or visual evidence.

Watch real Philip Experiment footage and witness the table-tilting phenomena for yourself. Is a spirit to blame or are the group's members perpetuating a hoax? Also view a dramatized documentary that chronicles the details and findings of the Philip Experiment.

• Biography of Paranormal Researcher Dr. A.R.G. Owen
• Welcome to the Experiment - An Interactive Quiet Ones Website that Sets Up the Movie
• The Quiet Ones Official Lionsgate Website

The Sleep Experiment Review: A Hair-Raising & Shocking Adaption of the Legendary Internet Urban Legend

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Transformers One Review: Raise Your Expectations for the Best Transformers Film

Uglies review: a drab and sluggish ya adaptation with troubling ramifications, here after review: an emotional catholic horror drama that fully commits.

The Sleep Experiment is an excellent horror film that dives deep into the psychological damage caused by a top-secret government experiment. Based on Creepypasta’s The Russian Sleep Experiment , writer/director John Farrelly delivers his first feature film that exposes the horrors of what humanity is capable of when pushed to the brink. The film begins with a slow burn, however, as time passes on and the test subjects begin to hallucinate, the plot transitions into the psychological thriller realm before escalating into full physical horror in the final act. The Sleep Experiment has some pretty decent twists and turns along the way (some more obvious than others), but overall has a very solid story with a great performance from the entire cast.

Spoiler Warning Two detectives David (Anthony Murphy) and Robert (Barry John Kinsella) begin an investigation on the ethics involved in the top-secret research facility, Porton Down. One experiment stands out to them as the most horrific, The Sleep Experiment, a scientific experiment that took place during the Cold War. The experiment consisted of five prisoners, deemed Enemies of the State, being locked in a sealed gas chamber. An airborne stimulant was continually administered to keep the subjects awake for 30 consecutive days. The prisoners were promised that they would be set free and erase their prison sentences if they successfully complete the experiment.

In the film’s opening scene, a vehicle is driving through the night on May 16th, 1961, and arrives at a secret facility. Armed guards wearing protective gear wait outside the building as five hooded men are escorted down a dark staircase into an underground bunker. The five men are all prisoners held on national security charges, Luke (Will Murphy), Patrick (Sam McGovern), Edward (Rob James Capel), Sean (Brian Moore), and Eric (Steven Jess). Fifteen years in the future, the two detectives are interviewing Christopher (Tom Kerrisk), about his involvement with the experiment.

As the experiment officially begins, the five prisoners begin to become better acquainted with each other. They each introduce themselves and reveal their backstories as well as why they were originally sent to prison before participating in the experiment. The prisoners were all charged and convicted with either murder or attempted murder. The men are hopeful that they will successfully complete the experiment so that they can be released from prison and return home to their families. Back in 1976, the two detectives believe that Christopher was the person who designed the sleep experiment for the military.

As the interview continues, Christopher reveals that the five prisoners weren’t randomly chosen for the experiment, but in fact, they each volunteered to participate. The detectives accuse Christopher of being responsible for the deaths of nine people when the experiment was being conducted. On the fourth day of the experiment, Eric begins to struggle mentally while Patrick has an asthma attack. The guards enter the room and escort Patrick to receive medical attention. The very next day (Day 5), Patrick returns to the experiment room where the rest of the prisoners immediately become suspicious of his actual whereabouts.

Hallucinations Rapidly Approach

As the film’s timeline continues to shift back and forth between 1961 and 1976, Christopher provides plenty of details and information to the two detectives about his design. During the interview, Christopher discovers that the experiment is connected personally to Robert, learning that his father was one of the test subjects. On Day 12, Patrick has another asthma attack and is escorted out of the room for the second time. The men begin having extreme hallucinations as Eric and Sean scream and demand to be released from the experiment. The next day, Patrick returns to the experiment room where he doesn’t seem to be in the same condition as his fellow test subjects.

Luke becomes even more suspicious of Patrick only to learn that he has been taking notes of everything that has happened for the past twelve days. Edward experiences a severe hallucination where he believes that Luke is responsible for the death of his daughter. As Edward confronts Luke, Luke unveils the notebook that he had stolen from Patrick. It is revealed that Patrick was an undercover test subject the entire time. Luke provokes Edward into believing that he truly killed his daughter until Edward reaches a mental breaking point and brutally kills Luke.

Related: Nocebo Review: An Obvious Plot Derails Supernatural Thriller

With Luke dead and the other test subjects mentally spiraling out of control, on Day 14, the scientists decide to shut down the experiment and immediately send armed guards into the room. As the guards cautiously enter the pitch-dark room, they are violently attacked by the prisoners, causing more deaths in the process. The surviving guards are able to successfully remove the prisoners from the room where they immediately seek medical assistance. Back in 1976, Christopher leaves the interview before apologizing to Robert about his father.

After the interview, the detectives decide to continue their investigation where they speak with a chemical engineer who helped conduct the experiment. They discover that Christopher not only designed the experiment but was also the lead scientist. David races to Christopher’s home only to find that he had already left town. In the basement of Christopher’s home, David finds and listens to a tape recording only to learn the horrible truth of Christopher's intentions and the end result of the five prisoners.

John Farrelly Succeeds in Filmmaking

From the directing standpoint, John Farrelly did not disappoint with The Sleep Experiment . Both timelines in the story transitioned at a very good pace, while the cinematography and soundtrack are superb. With only an hour and 20-minute runtime, the film did seem short, but it gets straight to the point and doesn’t prolong the story whatsoever. The Irish psychological thriller , The Sleep Experiment , is a film worth watching and certainly payoffs as an outstanding first feature film for John Farrelly.

The Sleep Experiment comes to us from Red Water Entertainment and is currently available on a number of digital and cable platforms, including iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, iNDemand, and DISH.

• Movie and TV Reviews
• The Soviet Sleep Experiment