A keen, gripping psychodrama with unsettling real-life underpinnings, Das Experiment marries German post-fascist soul-searching to the fast-paced voyeuristic pop thrills of reality TV. Though uncredited as such, the film cribs its plot from the Stanford Prison Experiment, a 1971 study in which male college students role-played guards and inmates. Stanford's projected two-week incarceration was terminated after six days due to its unexpectedly severe mental effects on both subjects and researchers.
