20 volunteers agree to take part in a seemingly well-paid experiment advertised by the university. It is supposed to be about aggressive behavior in an artificial prison situation. A journalist senses a story behind the ad and smuggles himself in among the test subjects. They are randomly divided into prisoners and guards. What seems like a game at the beginning soon turns into bloody seriousness.
Ratings
Curator score: 5.5/10
IMDb: 7.7/10
Letterboxd: 3.69/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 72%
Metacritic: 59
TMDB: 7.4/10
Director
Oliver Hirschbiegel
Production
Fanes Film, Typhoon Film, Senator Film, Seven Pictures
Cast
Moritz Bleibtreu, Christian Berkel, Justus von Dohnányi, Maren Eggert, Edgar Selge, Andrea Sawatzki, Oliver Stokowski, Wotan Wilke Möhring, Nicki von Tempelhoff, Timo Dierkes, Antoine Monot Jr., Lars Gärtner, Philipp Hochmair, Peter Fieseler, Ralf Müller, Danny Richter, Polat Dal, Stephan Szasz, Markus Rudolf, Thorsten Dersch
Curator Review
Verdict
A tense, claustrophobic psychological thriller that turns a simple power game into a grim study of authority, conformity, and human cruelty. It’s not subtle, but it is effective, brisk, and unsettling, with strong performances and a steadily tightening sense of dread.
Best for
Viewers interested in psychological experiments and social breakdown
Fans of confined, high-pressure thrillers
Audiences who like morally bleak, performance-driven dramas
People drawn to stories about power, dehumanization, and escalation
Skip if
You want a nuanced, slow-burn character study over shock and momentum
You’re sensitive to cruelty, abuse, or prison violence
You prefer realism without heightened melodrama
You dislike films that get increasingly brutal and oppressive
Overview
The Experiment takes a famously disturbing premise and pushes it into lean thriller territory. What begins as a controlled social exercise quickly becomes a study in how fast hierarchy, fear, and performance can mutate into real violence. The film’s biggest strength is its pressure-cooker setup: once the rules start to collapse, the whole thing feels like it’s spiraling toward disaster almost by design.
Worth noting
Oliver Hirschbiegel keeps the atmosphere cold and watchful, and the prison space becomes a trap as much as a setting. The cast sells the gradual loss of restraint well enough that the film’s more sensational turns still land with force. It can feel a little rushed in how it escalates, but that urgency also keeps it from becoming academic.
Bottom line
This is not a comfortable watch, and it isn’t trying to be. It works best as a grim, efficient thriller about power corrupting behavior faster than people expect, and about how easily a system can turn ordinary participants into enforcers or victims.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Marcissus (4★) · 149 likes
I absolutely could not wait for this film to end. really liked it
DirkH (3★) · 126 likes
Do NOT like this review.
If you do, your eternal soul belongs to me.
Rizki (3.5★) · 106 likes
Phew. The Experiment is one hell of a journey. The film asks what happens when good people are put in an evil place: does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? It also examines the role of memory when faced with extreme stress and deprivation.
It’s more than simple homage and pop psychology. Director Oliver Hirschbiegel manages to create an entirely dark world, both inside and outside the prison. Only in the final frames of the film do we see… more
Faeze Pourpeyghambar (3.5★) · 94 likes
Is power evil in its nature?
Socio-cognitive researches have indicated that power affects how people think and act. But the problem begins with an overact and how people overuse the power by only «feeling powerful». Its nature is so unreal, like we can accomplish just about anything! But it actually leads nowhere but demise. According to some psychological researches, power can enhance the normal amount of confidence and self-regulation in people so much that they may abuse their power to… more
Uusss 𔘓 (3.5★) · 85 likes
Das Experiment delivers a tense and disturbing exploration of how quickly power can corrupt and dismantle moral boundaries. The film’s strongest aspect lies in its claustrophobic setting and the psychological escalation among participants, capturing the essence of authority and dehumanization. It was genuinely difficult to watch at times because I found myself utterly frustrated with the characters playing the guards. 🫠
Some striking cinematography and bold editing ultimately do not make up for the flaws in the script. The sudden… more
2004 · Thriller, Drama · 1h 42m · R · Curator 6.2/10 (839.2K ratings)
A bleak psychological spiral with an oppressive atmosphere and a strong sense of mental and physical deterioration.
Topics
psychological thriller, prison setting, social experiment, claustrophobic, moral decay, power dynamics, German cinema, dark drama, based on true events, late-1990s/early-2000s