Das Experiment

So I saw Das Experiment tonight. A makeshift prison is created in a research lab and 20 guys are hired for the roles of prisoners and guards in this 2 week study of psychology of prison life. The movie is about how these normal people started playing their roles to perfection and how this experiment went haywire. I thought it was a pretty interesting movie. The acting was good, it was fast paced, music was really good and I was at the edge of my seat most of the time, miserably failing at second-guessing the script. The concept was novel, although (I felt) very contrived.

As I usually do after watching an interesting movie, I logged onto read it up on IMDB. And I was shocked!

This novel albeit contrived movie was based on real life events. (I say reality is the most contrived illusion). From the official website of The Stanford Prison Experiment:

Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress.


The torture tactics employed by the guards, the miserable state of the prisoners...all that I felt was a hyperbole in the movie happened in a real life experiment! Imagine going to work tomorrow and finding Agent Smith is there to arrest Mr. Anderson. It was that shocking!

Not really a movie I would highly rate, it sure was interesting enough to inspire this blog post.