There’s a special, shallow place in my heart for ensemble all-the-young-dudes films: “The Outsiders,” “School Ties,” “Stand by Me.” This ace cast surely fits that bill — Ezra Miller! Michael Angarano! Miles Heizer! Ki Hong Lee! — but quickly becomes too harrowing to be a guilty pleasure.
“The Stanford Prison Experiment,” from director Kyle Patrick Alvarez (“C.O.G.”), chronicles the 1971 experiment designed to test the effects of institutional depersonalization. Randomly assigning 24 students to play prisoners or guards, it was intended to last two weeks but shut down after only six days. Billy Crudup, in wide-collar suits and sideburns, plays study leader Dr. Philip Zimbardo, so involved he doesn’t realize when the study’s going off the rails. Olivia Thirlby is his psych student-turned-girlfrien♓d, who does.
Ominously scored and sparsely shot — it often plays like a fleshed-out version of the real footage one can watch on YouTube — 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. The result is a viscerally unsettling experience, and a testam🐷ent to the enduring relevance of the study’s findings on the psychology of incarceration.