the experiment 2001

The Experiment (2001)

Original title: das experiment.

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Das Experiment is a shocking psycho thriller about the potential for brutality that humans hide. Even more shocking is the fact that it’s based on an actual occurrence — a 1971 psychological experiment at Stanford University that was aborted prematurely when the experimenters lost control.

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The experiment, das experiment.

Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel

You are invited to participate

Das Experiment is a shocking psycho thriller about the potential for brutality that humans hide. Even more shocking is the fact that it’s based on an actual occurrence — a 1971 psychological experiment at Stanford University that was aborted prematurely when the experimenters lost control.

Moritz Bleibtreu Christian Berkel Oliver Stokowski Wotan Wilke Möhring Stephan Szasz Andrea Sawatzki Polat Dal Danny Richter Ralf Müller Markus Rudolf Peter Fieseler Thorsten Dersch Sven Grefer Justus von Dohnányi Nicki von Tempelhoff Timo Dierkes Antoine Monot Jr. Lars Gärtner Jacek Klimontko Markus Klauk Ralph Püttmann Edgar Selge Philipp Hochmair Tristan Vostry Maren Eggert André Jung Uwe Rohde Heiner Lauterbach Fatih Akin Show All… Christiane Gerboth Klaus Spinnler

Director Director

Oliver Hirschbiegel

Producers Producers

Klaus Spinnler Marc Conrad Norbert Preuss Friedrich Wildfeuer Benjamin Herrmann

Writers Writers

Don Bohlinger Christoph Darnstädt

Original Writer Original Writer

Mario Giordano

Casting Casting

An Dorthe Braker

Editor Editor

Cinematography cinematography.

Rainer Klausmann

Assistant Director Asst. Director

Isabel Kleefeld

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Philip Evenkamp

Camera Operator Camera Operator

Moritz Bleibtreu

Additional Photography Add. Photography

Stefan Biebl

Art Direction Art Direction

Uli Hanisch Kai Koch

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Andrea Kessler

Special Effects Special Effects

Karl-Heinz Bochnig

Stunts Stunts

Ernst Reimann

Composer Composer

Alexander Bubenheim

Sound Sound

Wolfgang Wirtz Christof Ebhardt Jörn Poetzl Max Rammler-Rogall

Costume Design Costume Design

Claudia Bobsin

Seven Pictures Typhoon Fanes Film Senator Film Senator International

Germany USA

Releases by Date

07 mar 2001, 08 mar 2001, 17 may 2001, 19 oct 2001, 07 nov 2001, 22 mar 2002, 06 jun 2002, 23 aug 2002, 10 oct 2002, 03 apr 2003, 23 jul 2009, 11 may 2005, 16 jun 2010, releases by country.

• Theatrical 15+
• Theatrical 16
• Theatrical 18
• Theatrical VM14

Netherlands

• TV 16 RTL 5
• Physical 16 DVD

Switzerland

120 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by DirkH ★★★ 27

Do NOT like this review.

If you do, your eternal soul belongs to me.

Review by Marcissus ★★★★ 6

I absolutely could not wait for this film to end. really liked it

Review by Faeze Pourpeyghambar ★★★½

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 act in a corrupt manner. Just like what we see in Oliver Hirschbiegel’s psychological drama, Das Experiment.

The Experiment (2001) is about a group of people as part of a psychological research project. These twenty men are getting divided up…

Review by André Hecker ★★★★½

Großartiges, deutsches Kino. Unfassbar spannend und bedrückend, hervorragend gespielt, sehr gut durchdacht und beobachtet und knüppelhart. Das soziale Aufwiegeln in einer Extremsituation läuft zwar etwas im Schnelldurchlauf, dafür besitzt Das Experiment aber auch keine Längen oder Umwege.

--------------------------------

Great German cinema. Incredibly tense and oppressive, excellently acted, very well thought out and observed, and brutal. The social stirring up in an extreme situation runs a little fast, but The Experiment therefore has no lengths or detours.

Review by 📀 Cammmalot 📀 ★★★★ 2

Cinematic Time Capsule 2001 Marathon - Film #28

”I have a feeling we are losing control”

In this highly fictionalized thriller that’s inspired by the famous 1971 Stanford psychological experiment, test subjects are recruited to participate in a 14-day simulation as “prisoners” and “guards” in a pretend prison.

Right from the outset the rules are very clear that there is to be no violence and everyones safety is the number one priority. However, as the study begins and the human animal emerges, what started as an interesting sociological experiment slowly spirals out of control and these power hungry guinea pigs find themselves taking over the asylum.

To me, this terrifyingly real subject, is way scarier than any supernatural horror film, and as I watched things descend into utter madness it was so horrific and uncomfortable that I wasn’t even sure how to react.

”The rules say to react to all events appropriately”

Cinematic Time Capsule - 2001 Ranked

Review by cinemacl🎃wn ★★★½ 2

A psychological thriller that observes the behavioural changes people undergo when they are placed in a position of power or submission in a confined atmosphere, Das Experiment is a patiently crafted, concisely narrated & brilliantly acted feature that begins slowly but escalates soon enough into a nail-biting tale of survival.

The story follows a taxi driver who, in order to make some quick cash, decides to take part in a social experiment after learning about it in a newspaper. The volunteers are assigned the role of guards & prisoners in a simulated prison situation but it soon spirals out of control when the guards become aware of the power they have.

Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel ( Der Untergang ), the film borrows its concept…

Review by Nikhil Das ★★★½

The fact that this film is based on true events of Stanford Prison experiment happened at 1971 terrifies me. The psychological study of human behaviour and the experiment concept felt very intriguing and the performances were really good but I'd liked this more if not for that romance aspect. The romance aspect was totally unnecessary and the whole Dora - Fahd relationship thing felt kinda rushed and lacked the credibility.

Review by Flo ★★★★½ 5

Das Experiment ist ein ziemlich interessanter Film, welcher auf dem Stanford-Prison-Experiment basiert. Die Handlung ist schon an sich interessant, aber wie der Film die Handlung erzählt macht diesen Film unglaublich spannend und interessanter. Der Film hat genau das richtige Tempo, wodurch der Film mich gar nicht gelangweilt hat und sogar jede Minute spannender wurde. Außerdem wird der Film immer härter. Dazu hat der Film eine sehr bedrückende Atmosphäre, was zum Film passt. Die Figuren sind ziemlich gut geschrieben, denn diese sind Tiefgründig und haben auch ihre Charakterentwicklung, was sogar glaubwürdig umgesetzt wurde. Dazu sind diese auch interessant und fühlen sich überhaupt nicht leer an. Auch das Schauspiel ist sogar recht stark, was ich bei einen deutschen Film nicht erwartet habe.…

Review by Héctor ★★★★

In my opinion this movie is great, it is tough but it has a lot of background. The fact that it was based on true events led me thinking. They did an American adaptation, I should check it out but this one was really interesting. .

Review by Jessie ★★★★

Intense film that will leave you disgusted at the darker side of humanity. Based off of real life psychological experiment in 1971, Das Experiment is chock full of great performances by the cast, including Moritz Bleibtreu (personal favorite German actor), and looks into morality and the psychology of power and how quickly it becomes exploited.

Hard to watch, but excellent film.

Review by Derek ★★★½

I need to preface this thing by saying that The Experiment has literally the worst music that I've heard had to listen to in a movie. It was more or less the kind of music you'd hear in a really bad 80s action movie, except here it's so out of place that it would have been funny if it wasn't for the fact that they blare it obnoxiously every time it randomly comes out. The movie itself was pretty good, though. I didn't know how I felt about it at first, mainly because the side plot with him and his girlfriend seemed nonsensically all over the place. When it gets into it, though, it really gets into it. It's one…

Review by Denny_Crane ★★★

Filmwelt Filmclub  #61 - The Experiment - Ausgewählt von  CristavoFring

Sehr solider deutscher Film mit verdammt guter und überzeugender Besetzung und einer Story die einen zu keinem Moment langweilt. Die Thematik des Zumbardo-Experiments wurde zwar schon öfter verfilmt, der deutsche Film ist davon meine liebste Version.

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The Experiment

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All images are copyrighted by their respective copyright holders and/or producers/distributors.

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• #52 Best German Movies of all time
• #100 Best Movies Based on a True Story
• "It's hypnotic, a slick and well-told story that's all the more haunting because it's finally empty."  Elvis Mitchell : The New York Times
• "A harrowing study of the corrosive effects of absolute power." The Washington Post
• "An R-rated version of Survivor, Big Brother or any number of reality-TV shows that present voyeurism as entertainment and exploitation as insight." Loren King : Chicago Tribune
• "This deftly crafted film provokes the kind of creeping horror that Lord of the Flies memorably nailed." Megan Turner : New York Post
• "A disturbing film that forces moviegoers to ask: 'What would I do in a similar situation?'"  Jonathan Curiel : SFGATE
• "Rigid, airless, and browbeatingly repetitive, Das Experiment is an overly didactic piece of thesis hectoring"  Owen Gleiberman : Entertainment Weekly
• 16 My Favorite German Movies (72)
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The Experiment (2001)

Directed by oliver hirschbiegel.

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Description by Wikipedia

Das Experiment (English: The Experiment) is a 2001 German thriller film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. It is based on Mario Giordano's novel Black Box and deals with a social experiment which resembles Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment of 1971.

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The Experiment

What to know.

Das Experiment 's knotty plot may not prove as revelatory as it promises, but it succeeds as an action film with a lot on its addled mind.

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Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Oliver Hirschbiegel

Moritz Bleibtreu

Maren Eggert

Christian Berkel

Justus von Dohnányi

Berus - Strafvollzugsbeamter

Oliver Stokowski

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The Experiment (2001) Stream and Watch Online

Looking to watch ' The Experiment ' on your TV, phone, or tablet? Tracking down a streaming service to buy, rent, download, or view the Oliver Hirschbiegel-directed movie via subscription can be challenging, so we here at Moviefone want to help you out. We've listed a number of streaming and cable services - including rental, purchase, and subscription choices - along with the availability of 'The Experiment' on each platform when they are available. Now, before we get into the fundamentals of how you can watch 'The Experiment' right now, here are some specifics about the Seven Pictures, Typhoon, Fanes Film, Senator Film, Senator International drama flick. Released March 8th, 2001, 'The Experiment' stars Moritz Bleibtreu , Christian Berkel , Oliver Stokowski , Wotan Wilke Möhring The movie has a runtime of about 2 hr, and received a user score of 74 (out of 100) on TMDb, which compiled reviews from 1,055 top users. Want to know what the movie's about? Here's the plot: "Das Experiment is a shocking psycho thriller about the potential for brutality that humans hide. Even more shocking is the fact that it’s based on an actual occurrence — a 1971 psychological experiment at Stanford University that was aborted prematurely when the experimenters lost control." .

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The Experiment

26 men are chosen to participate in the roles of guards and prisoners in a psychological study that ultimately spirals out of control. 26 men are chosen to participate in the roles of guards and prisoners in a psychological study that ultimately spirals out of control. 26 men are chosen to participate in the roles of guards and prisoners in a psychological study that ultimately spirals out of control.

• Paul T. Scheuring
• Mario Giordano
• Christoph Darnstädt
• Adrien Brody
• Cam Gigandet
• Forest Whitaker
• 149 User reviews
• 55 Critic reviews

Top cast 36

• (as Lavell 'David Banner' Crump)

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• Trivia This movie is a remake of a movie ( The Experiment (2001) ) based on a book that was inspired by the real-life Stanford prison experiment. Although the experiment's purpose is not explicitly mentioned in the film, the original study was meant to observe the effects of power, rules, group identity and dehumanization in a simulated prison environment. The Stanford prison experiment also employed test subjects as either guards of prisoners, but ended early as both groups took their respective roles too seriously. The experiment will never be redone, because although it was deemed ethical at the time under the later-amended rules of the American Psychiatric Association, any research done must not physically or mentally harm the participants.
• Goofs In the scene near the end, where Travis is beating up Barris, Travis had recently grabbed the blade of the knife when Barris tried to stab him. His hand was shown to be very bloody. However, when the red light and the alarm went on and Travis raised his hands to his head, his hand was completely clean and unharmed.

Archaleta : Justice is what keeps us safe as a society. Ordered law.

Travis : Justice is what starts wars. And eye for and eye for an eye. It takes a turning of the cheek for this species to evolve.

Archaleta : Ah, so you're the one who knows what it's going to take for this society to evolve.

Travis : I'm just regurgitating what people have been saying for a long time.

• Connections References Red Dawn (1984)
• Soundtracks You're the Only One For Me Written by Alan Ett and William Ashford Performed by The Music Collective

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 36 minutes
• Black and White
• Dolby Digital

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The Experiment

• There are no locations currently available for this title

• Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey Even when playing a bad-boy archetype, Bleibtreu is an enormously charismatic actor who grabs the audience and runs with it.
• Seattle Times Moira MacDonald Excels at building tension to an almost-unbearable point.
• Detroit Free Press Terry Lawson Das Experiment may make an obvious point, but it's still a relevant one.
• Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert What impressed me is how effective the movie was, even though the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
• San Francisco Chronicle Jonathan Curiel Hirschbiegel has given narrative form to man's inhumanity to man.
• Chicago Tribune Loren King An R-rated version of Survivor, Big Brother or any number of reality-TV shows that present voyeurism as entertainment and exploitation as insight.
• Boston Globe Janice Page As it goes into the final turn and is headed for home, it mysteriously runs right off the rails, and Hirschbiegel seems happy to let the whole thing spin wildly out of control.
• Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman Rigid, airless, and browbeatingly repetitive, Das Experiment is an overly didactic piece of thesis hectoring.
• New York Times Elvis Mitchell It's empty calories trying to trumpet its bogus nutritional value, and the strain for social importance undermines the picture.
• Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas The cat-and-mouse game proceeds along conventional lines; the plot is full of holes.
• San Jose Mercury News Glenn Lovell At once simplistic and compelling in a trashy sort of way.
• New York Post Megan Turner This deftly crafted film provokes the kind of creeping horror that Lord of the Flies memorably nailed.
• Slant Magazine Ed Gonzalez Purports to be concerned with the many fine lines between fantasy and reality though it succeeds only in celebrating torture and rape for cheap thrills.
• Observer Andrew Sarris It is in the camera details rather than the grand design that Das Experiment excels.
• Ebert & Roeper Richard Roeper Too many flaws, too many holes in the plot.
• Village Voice Ed Halter A keen, gripping psychodrama with unsettling real-life underpinnings.
• Washington Post A harrowing study of the corrosive effects of absolute power.
• Washington Post In the end, it looks as if this experiment proves only one thing: People forced to play guards and prisoners tend to end up imitating bad prison movies.

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The Experiment

Das Experiment is a shocking psycho thriller about the potential for brutality that humans hide. Even more shocking is the fact that it’s based on an actual occurrence — a 1971 psychological experiment at Stanford University that was aborted prematurely when the experimenters lost control.

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Movie Score

March 7, 2001,

Oliver Hirschbiegel

Moritz Bleibtreu, Christian Berkel, Oliver Stokowski, Wotan Wilke Möhring, Stephan Szasz, Andrea Sawatzki

Drama, Thriller

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Beautiful, interesting, incredible cinema.

The movie is based on the infamous “Stanford Prison Experiment” conducted in 1971. A makeshift prison is set up in a research lab, complete with cells, bars and surveillance cameras. For two weeks 20 male participants are hired to play prisoners and guards…

• svg]:fill-accent-900">

The ‘forbidden experiment’ is an infamously evil chapter in scientific history

By Popular Science Team

Posted on Aug 28, 2024 9:00 AM EDT

6 minute read

Credit: Rijksmuseum

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci ’s hit podcast . The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple , Spotify , YouTube , and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Check out Weirdest Thing’s new page on Reddit to meet fellow Weirdos! 

FACT: This experiment was so cruel that people now call it “the forbidden experiment”

By Dr. Danielle Bainbridge 

Throughout history language deprivation experiments have (rightfully) gotten the name “the forbidden experiment” because of the cruelty involved in testing their subjects. An article from Slate traces a brief history of these experiments, starting with Pharaoh Psamtik I around 600 BC. 

According to ancient historian Herodotus , Psamtik I gave two newborns to a shepherd who was instructed not to speak to them. The idea was to see what kind of language the children would speak without any external influences. 

A similar experiment was supposedly conducted in the 13th century by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, but in the Chronicle of Salimbene , it is noted that the children, “…could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments.” In other words, the study subjects died. 

In the 20th century, cases of neglected and abused children resulted in unintentional replications of these experiments, such as Genie from California in 1970, Oxana in Ukraine in the 1980s, and a young boy named John in Uganda in the 1990s. Despite the cruelties of the past, it’s clear to us today why this experiment should not and cannot be replicated on living subjects. But it can teach us a lot about the questions that preoccupied ancient humans. 

For what it’s worth, humans seem to be remarkably resilient and resourceful when it comes to finding ways to communicate with one another. Just look at the kids who developed their own sign language!

FACT: Some frogs are so sticky and annoying that it saves them from predators 

By Sara Kiley Watson

How does a frog get out of a sticky situation? Gluing their predator’s mouth shut. Or, at least that’s the way it works for the Dyscophus guineti—a cute little orange frog that only lives in Madagascar and loves some swampy, marshy climes. A study came out in July in Nature Communications that unpacks the science of this sticky little tomato frog, which emits a thick, viscous, glue-like substance when provoked. 

We’ve all heard about creatures like the famed poison dart frog that use their mucus as a medium to poison their predators—but poison can be imperfect. A small predator that takes on a poison dart frog is probably doomed from the get-go. If a big predator happens to take on a bufo toad, which creates a less potent poison in its moment of terror, it might not feel those less-than-pleasant or even deadly side effects until it’s too late for the frog in question to escape. Glue, however, works right away—making it impossible for a predator like a snake to swallow the sticky frog, and distracting it for long enough to allow prey to escape.

How this tactic evolved—and how many creatures have this unique escape route baked into their genetics—is still a mystery. But scientists are getting into the thick of it, even if that means risking getting their fingers glued together by a less-than-happy frog specimen. 

FACT: People used to think that thunderstorms turned milk sour

By Rachel Feltman

On June 12, 1858, Scientific American published a letter to the editor called “Lightning and Milk” written by John Dean Caton. It opened as follows: “Messrs. Editors—It may not be generally understood by scientific men, but it is well known to dairy men and housewives that a violent thunderstorm turns sweet into sour milk.”

According to Atlas Obscura , this was a widely-held truth in Europe and North America. Back in the late 1600s, a Flemish alchemist wrote that ​​“At the time when it thunders, Beer, Milk, etc. turn sower [sour] in the Cellars. The Thunder doth everywhere introduce corruption and putrefaction.” (Wow, does that last sentence go hard!) 

There were different theories about this. Noah Webster, the dictionary dude, thought maybe it had to do with the drop in barometric pressure. Other folks thought maybe the lightning created ozone or another kind of gas that might make milk go sour. Other people thought it was the electricity itself. 

I get into the experiments people did around sour milk and thunderstorms in this week’s episode of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week . But what I find really interesting about the thunderstorms-turning-milk-sour thing is that it’s been really sticky . Just a few weeks ago, someone posted on the subreddit r/AskFoodHistorians asking what the heck their Swedish grandmother was talking about when she said that filmjolk formed or got ruined (like, too curdled) if a thunderstorm got too bad. The mod was like, “food historians are not the right people to ask about what happens to dairy in a thunderstorm! Keep this discussion to historical beliefs about the subject,” and nevertheless lots of people spitballed on what might be happening, up to and including speculation on how thunderstorms might change cow behavior and therefore change their milk. Four years ago, someone posted in r/AskUK saying “my anecdotal evidence suggests it does but every time I look into it the jury still seems to be out” and responded to someone giving the literal scientific explanation with “ha! Clever answer”

Anyway, sorry to tease this out: someone actually cracked it in 1891. Just absolutely high on the new advances in our understanding of microbiology, Aaron L. Treadwell decided to compare the effects of an electric charge on pasteurized vs unsterilized milk. He found that pasteurized milk was way less likely to curdle in a simulated lightning storm than raw dairy was, and very sensibly concluded that whatever was happening had to do with bacterial growth, not some transformation entirely connected to the electricity. He correctly deduced that “favorable conditions of the atmosphere” led to rapid bacterial growth. As a 1927 guide to dairy production from the University of Wisconsin very poetically put it: “A thick, sultry atmosphere usually precedes thunder showers and provides favorable conditions for the growth of milk-souring bacteria.” 

Check out this week’s episode for a whole bunch of barely-related funky dairy facts. 

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