Rent The Experiment (2001)

Scary, rather good, low budget film - well worth watching - The Experiment review by RP

Yes, it's in German with subtitles, but don't let that put you off - it's rather good, although clearly a low budget effort.

The film is based on the book 'The Black Box Experiment' by Mario Giordano, itself based on the 1971 so-called Stanford prison experiment (look it up on Wikipedia). The film tells the story of 20 volunteers paid to take part in a psychological research experiment. Divided into 'prisoners' and 'guards', the 'guards' begin to take their role too seriously and the experiment moves from an innocent game, through ritual humiliation, to violence, retribution - and death.

OK, it's a drama - but perhaps a fictional illustration that power corrupts. And lest we forget, similar events happen in real life. The events at Abu Ghraib prison, anyone?

The two central characters are a taxi driver Tarek Fahd (who is given a somewhat weak back story and a girlfriend) and the 'guard' named Berus - they antagonise each other and clearly things are going to go too far. How far is quite scary - for a low budget film it is really well done.

There are a few loose ends, a few noticeable continuity errors, and the subtitles are in American rather than English and my German tells me that the translation is a bit uneven. But it's well worth watching. I also note that there has been a 2010 US remake with the Forest Whitaker, but I haven't seen that one.

The director is Olivier Hirschbiegel who went on to make the excellent 'Downfall' about the last days of Hitler, yet another excellent film.

I can recommend 'The Experiment' and rate it as 4/5 stars.