Taxi driver Tarek applies for a strange add in which 20 people are supposed to play prisoners and guards in a fake prison for two weeks, for the sake of a social experiment led by University Professor Thon and his assistant Jutta. The reward is 4,000 DEM each. Tarek takes on glasses with a secret camera on them for a journalistic report. Once inside, the relaxed mood quickly disappears and is replaced with more and more tension from the people playing the guards, mostly by Berus and Eckert who resort to cruelty to impose their discipline. Tarek befriends fellow prisoner Steinhoff, an Air Force pilot who secretly monitors the experiment for the German military. Exploiting Thon's absence one night, Berus and Eckert order the guards to beat up an inmate, Schütte, who dies from bleeding; place Tarek in a solitary confinement, and kidnap and imprison Jutta. When Tarek and Steinhoff escape and release the prisoners, they end up in a bitter fight with Berus and Eckert, after which the latter dies. The experiment is aborted and the police arrest the guards.
"The Experiment" is a dark and bitter contemplation on how social laws prevent the worst aggressive impulses from emerging among even ordinary people—and how sometimes the border between playing a role and reality can disappear. It is inspired by the famous Stanford prison experiment led by Philip Zimbardo, but the movie unfortunately takes it very loosely—so loosely, in fact, that it seems more like a Hollywood action film exaggerating everything for pure sensationalism and unearned thrills than an intelligent European film. A little bit more of the latter would have been better. The first half is the best since it still has a sense for measure: the introduction of the characters is effective, and it is ironic watching how the guards of this fake prison are actually seemingly benign characters (Eckert is a professional Elvis impersonator; Berus works as an executive for an airline), but the role of guards gives them that illusion of power, authority and dominance over others, a sort of fake sense of significance. Soon they will start abusing the "volunteer prisoners", already revealing their dark side (an inmate says he cannot drink milk because he is lactose intolerant, but Eckert insists that all of them must eat their meal to the end, until their plates are empty, without exception, so Tarek defuses the situation by simply drinking the man's milk himself). The prison guards are not allowed to use violence, so Berus decides to spray them with a fire extinguisher, take the beds from their cells, strip them naked and leave them like that for the night, since, in his own words, "humiliation in control". There are some thought provoking issues touched upon here, such as situational context, the hidden urge for absolute power among some people (hinted at as an allegory of the Nazi dictatorship), empathy, and the limits of following orders even when it is not "worth it", but the second half becomes just a cheap action and fight collection, with highly unconvincing cliches (the Professor is at first absent, and then when the whole situation goes out of hand, he storms in alone, without any assistants to help him end this), which reduces the film's quality.
Grade:++
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