Recommended!

Golgo-13

This German film is a great piece of psychological horror. Based on the real life Stanford Prison Experiment from 1971, the basic storyline revolves around a group of twenty male volunteers who role-play prison life (twelve guards and eight prisoners). The prisoners have simple rules to follow and the guard's job is to enforce them but without violence. It is, after all, a research project to study human behavior. At first, both the guards and prisoners take it as simply a game but as it goes on, things get drastically out of hand. When certain prisoners don't follow a basic command or joke around too much, the guards are forced to come up with punishments. Some people just can't handle authority though. The days go by, sadistic humiliation and violence ensues, and eventually, all control is lost. Das Experiment explores human nature with disturbing results. The movie is well made, despite a few weak plot points, and has fine acting from the leads. One final thing I would like to praise is how well claustrophobic tension is captured in some scenes of Das Experiment (such as with the gagged man tied to a chair and the black isolation box)…I could really feel the distress and helplessness of the victims.

score 8/10

Golgo-13 22 April 2006

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1348002/