The Experiment (2010)

Tonights view instant flick was 2010's The Experiment with Adrien Brody and Forest Whitaker.  The Experiment is a psychological thriller, a genera that also had the equally provocative Unthinkable with Samuel Jackson.

The Experiment and Unthinkable had a lot of similarities.  If you have seen and liked Unthinkable, then The Experiment will be a good choice for you to watch.  The premise of the film is a group of men respond to a wanted ad in the paper to do a psychological study.  The study pits mock prison guards agains mock prison inmates.

Acting was surprisingly good.  Brody delivered an exceptionally good inmate lead while Whitaker was creepily good as lead guard.  The film did not have much change of scenery, which can cause problems in some films.  In this one however, you were so caught up in the story that it is not an issue at all.

Script and story were very believable.  The story was based on the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971, and even though the film rushes and skips a lot of details, it is still an interesting movie.  My only exception is I don't believe the amount of restraint shown at the end of the film would be shown in real life.

As for basing off of the original experiment, or the movie Das Experiment of which this is a loose remake, this film misses a lot.  In this remake, the doctors doing the experiment are not seen once the group enters the fake prison.  As I said above, the film also felt a bit rushed.  A few scenes into the film we jump from day 2 to day 6; what just happened?

My biggest question about the film is when things start to go awol, why did the doctors conducting the experiment let it continue, and not put a stop to it as they warned before everyone went in?  Everyone was told that if any violence, or breaking of the rules, were to occur that the experiment would end.

Overall, not having seen the 2001 Das Experiment I would this version 3 star rating.  Acting and filming were good and script and storyline had decent potential, but the film did feel a bit rushed and I felt parts were missing.  As always please leave comments, click above to follow my blog and share to your favorite social networking site below.  Ciao for now and see you for the next review!