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"The Stanford Prison Experiment"
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U.S. Dramatic
The line between depicting horrific behavior and wallowing in it gets exceedingly blurry in "The Stanford Prison Experiment," a sure-to-be-polarizing drama based on a true incident. In 1971, Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo (played by Billy Crudup) and his grad students recruited 18 young men for an experiment — reconfiguring the basement of a campus building into a makeshift prison, with half the men in the roles of inmates and the other half pretending to be guards. As the two-week experiment begins, both sides fall into their roles quickly, with the "inmates" becoming either rebellious or compliant and the "guards" getting increasingly brutal. Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez ("C.O.G.") and screenwriter Tim Talbott recreate the horrifying conditions of the experiment with disturbing fidelity and a chilling ambiguity that the "moral of the story" post-script (and Olivia Thirlby's thankless role as Zimbardo's voice-of-reason girlfriend) can't fix. The cast is as packed with future stars as "The Outsiders," with standouts including Tye Sheridan and Ezra Miller (among the inmates) and Michael Angarano as the nastiest guard this side of "Cool Hand Luke."
- Sean P. Means
"The Stanford Prison Experiment" is screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. It screens again: Wednesday, 11:45 p.m., Library Center Theatre, Park City; Thursday, 9 p.m, Tower Theatre, Salt Lake City; Friday, 5:30 p.m., Library Center Theatre, Park City; Saturday, 7 p.m., Redstone Cinema 2, Park City.