The Stanford Prison Experiment Review: Complete Immersion

You would have to go out of your way to have not heard of Dr. Philip Zimbardo’s famous prison experiment. Giving subjects the role of either prisoner or guard, what was intended to be a two-week experiment, ended abruptly after six. Subjects, especially the guards, immersed themselves into their roles like Daniel-Day Lewis in a film with a prime Oscar-season release date – the experiment showed just how given power, people can show their true nature. This is an experiment and its subjects are the basis for Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s gripping “The Stanford Prison Experiment.”

The film recounts what is one of psychology’s most famous experiments with Billy Crudup filling the role of Dr. Zimbardo – over-the-summer at Stanford, Dr. Zimbardo looks to recreate a prison environment to examine the effects authority has on ones behavior. Offering quick cash to young men to participate, it does not take long for Zimbardo to find his subjects, but just as quickly as this experiment is put together, it falls apart under the weight of its encompassing effects on its subjects.

At first things do not seem so bad, it almost feels like summer camp – until of course the guards begin exerting force and just like that the whole dynamic of the film changes. Alvarez’s precision elevates the tension to an eleven – you feel you are just apart of the experiment as the subjects are. What is only a six-day experiment feels like an eternity in movie time, which at times makes you want to scream at Zimbardo “STOP THE EXPERIMENT!”

Alvarez’s care for the material and memorable performances from Michael Angarano, who plays the experiment’s most ruthless guard, Tye Sheridan, and Ezra Miller, both play prisoners – take what on paper would seem as a by-the-numbers based on the true story film and deliver what is an unnerving look at power and human nature.

As the film progresses, guards begin to become increasingly aggressive and abusive as prisoners become more obedient and compliant as Dr. Zimbardo watches over them like a prison warden – Zimbardo even gets a taste of power, denying prisoner requests to leave, although in their contract they were given the right to leave whenever they wanted to.

Complete immersion into these roles by its subjects makes you look within yourself ask “would I abuse my power? Would I just take orders?” Again, enough cannot be said about Alvarez’s ability to bring the audience into the experience and make them ask these questions – this approach also shows just how relevant, 40 years later, Dr. Zimbardo’s experiment is.

“The Stanford Prison Experiment” is a great film top to bottom. Kyle Patrick Alvarez in conjunction with a marvelous young cast deliver the goods on a true story that does just more than replay the events of a summer at Stanford in 1971, but explores the questions that what happened at the university raised. Does absolute power corrupt absolutely?