This was a fictionalized treatment of the famous Zambardo experiments of the 70's. Here, like in real life, a group of volunteers is divided arbitrarily into guards and prisoners and isolated for two weeks to see how the group dynamic plays out. The real one quickly deteriorated into cruelty and sadism and had to be aborted after several days.
This film does a great job establishing characters and building suspense to a very satisfying climax. There was just enough cross cutting with outside events to keep the it from seeming stage-bound
Even though I was familiar with the original experiment I was curious to see where this filmmaker was going to take the story and found the last 20 minutes edge-of-your-seat exciting.
Some of the setup reminded me of Sidney Lumet's The Hill. Nice job.
7
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