The Experiment

Psychologically resounding but bedeviled by somewhat preposterous plot developments, this German thriller is loosely inspired by a Stanford study in which volunteers were placed as guards and inmates in a mock prison to see how they'd interact. In the film the "guards" become power-mad and one of the "prisoners"--a newspaper reporter (Moritz Bleibtreu, Run Lola Run) trying to get a juicy story--deliberately provokes them into a slippery-slope game of domination that turns violent and spirals out of control. With the professors running the experiment ill-prepared for this turn of events, the situation quickly turns nightmarish under the usurped despotic direction of a blatantly Hitler-like guard blindly intoxicated by his power in this "simulation." Director Oliver Hirschbiegel is successful in creating an unsettling atmosphere in which those trying to stop the experiment are overpowered, but the film's tension is undercut by the annoying, desperately farfetched contrivances needed to bring the story to a climax, ultimately making The Experiment more irritating than disturbing. Not a necessary purchase. (R. Blackwelder)