Metacritic reviews

Using real transcripts, and with the involvement of Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who was the psychologist who designed the project in the first place, Talbott and director Kyle Patrick Alvarez have opted to aim for something authentic and honest.

Alvarez’s clinical but deeply engrossing execution of the drama is mesmerizing in its directness.

A gripping dramatization, The Stanford Prison Experiment puts its audience in the same position as the head researcher, Dr. Philip Zimbardo: We watch with equal fascination and dread as a group of fresh-faced undergraduates adapt with scary speed to the roles they’re assigned.

Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez deserves all the praise in the world for the way he cranks up this pressure cooker script. The Stanford Prison Experiment begins with giggles but ends in full psychological break.

For all its flaws it’s a rich, thought-provoking film which, while challenging, is not without humor and visual pleasures, particularly in the restrained but bang-on period production design.

The formalism fashions effective textural shortcuts to behavioral understanding that the remarkable cast fills in with chilling, convincing finesse.

The film spirals steadily downward through humanity’s worst impulses as the guards, led by Angarano’s character, explore the free rein they’re given to torment the powerless.

Even simply sticking to the facts, the film is a painful watch.

A very good cast headed by Billy Crudup, Michael Angarano and Tye Sheridan stars in The Stanford Prison Experiment, a film as straight-forward and clinically chilling as its title.

The problem is not that this film is upsetting (it should be), but that it ultimately seems more interested, and skilled, at dispensing regular shocks than fresh insights.