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Movies like The Stanford Prison Experiment

Key Features:
Psychological study, Loss of innocence, Power dynamics, Psychology, Ethical dilemma, Human behavior, Control, Manipulation, Prison, Based on true story, Mind games, Psychological manipulation, Systemic abuse, Violence-moderate
Tone:
serious, dramatic, restrained
Target Audience:
Psychology students, True story enthusiasts, Drama viewers
Emotional Arc:
Curiosity → Unease → Horror

The Stanford Prison Experiment

2015-07-17
The Stanford Prison Experiment Poster - Find Similar Movies

In 1971, Stanford's Professor Philip Zimbardo conducts a controversial psychology experiment in which college students pretend to be either prisoners or guards, but the proceedings soon get out of hand. Based on a true story.

Genres
Thriller, Drama, History
Cast
Billy Crudup, Michael Angarano, Ezra Miller, Tye Sheridan, Olivia Thirlby, Nelsan Ellis, Moisés Arias, Nicholas Braun, Gaius Charles, Keir Gilchrist
Crew
Kyle Patrick Alvarez, Tim Talbott
Rating
6.8(968 votes)
The Stanford Prison ExperimentThe Stanford Prison Experiment
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The Experiment
6.386

20 men are chosen to participate in the roles of guards and prisoners in a psychological study that ultimately spirals out of control.



The Experiment
7.409

20 volunteers agree to take part in a seemingly well-paid experiment advertised by the university. It is supposed to be about aggressive behavior in an artificial prison situation. A journalist senses a story behind the ad and smuggles himself in among the test subjects. They are randomly divided into prisoners and guards. What seems like a game at the beginning soon turns into bloody seriousness.



Spiderhead
5.8

A prisoner in a state-of-the-art penitentiary begins to question the purpose of the emotion-controlling drugs he's testing for a pharmaceutical genius.



Hypersleep
6

The old and overcrowded penitentiaries are just a memory. Inmates now serve their sentence in a state of deep sleep that renders them harmless, and has drastically reduced recidivism. Until one day, a psychologist in charge of monitoring the mental state of inmates finds himself confronted with a prisoner over whom he's lost all control.



SS Experiment Love Camp

Near the end of WW2, prisoners of war are used in experiments to perfect the Arian race.



Experimenter
6.5

Yale University, 1961. Stanley Milgram designs a psychology experiment that still resonates to this day, in which people think they’re delivering painful electric shocks to an affable stranger strapped into a chair in another room. Despite his pleads for mercy, the majority of subjects don’t stop the experiment, administering what they think is a near-fatal electric shock, simply because they’ve been told to do so. With Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial airing in living rooms across America, Milgram strikes a nerve in popular culture and the scientific community with his exploration into people’s tendency to comply with authority. Celebrated in some circles, he is also accused of being a deceptive, manipulative monster, but his wife Sasha stands by him through it all.



Dread
Dread(2009)
5.5

Three college students set out to document what other people dread the most. However, one of the three turns out to secretly be a sadistic psychopath who uses this knowledge to gruesomely torture the subjects.



Infinity Chamber
6.3

A man trapped in an automated prison must outsmart a computer in order to escape and try and find his way back to the outside world that may already be wiped out.



The Institute
4.261

In 19th century Baltimore, Isabel Porter, a girl stricken with grief from her parents' untimely death, voluntarily checks herself into the Rosewood Institute. Subjected to bizarre and increasingly violent pseudo-scientific experiments in personality modification, brainwashing and mind control, she must escape the clutches of the Rosewood and exact her revenge, or else be forever lost.



Escapee
Escapee(2011)
3.864

While on a class observation trip at a local mental hospital, young psychology major Abby Jones, has a chilling encounter with high-risk patient, Harmon Porter. She returns home for an evening of normal study with her two roommates unaware of the darkness she’s awakened within him.



The Wave
The Wave(1981)
6.9

A teacher conducts an experiment in an American high school where students learn how easy it is to be seduced by the same social forces which led to the horrors of Nazi Germany.



Stockholm
Stockholm(2019)
5.9

Based on the extraordinary true story of the European city’s 1973 bank heist and hostage crisis that was documented in the 1974 New Yorker article “The Bank Drama” by Daniel Lang. The events grasped the world’s attention when the hostages bonded with their captors and turned against the authorities, giving rise to the psychological phenomenon known as “Stockholm Syndrome.”



True Story
6.256

A drama centered on the relationship between journalist Michael Finkel and Christian Longo, an FBI Most Wanted List murderer who for years lived outside the U.S. under Finkel's name.



Pathology
Pathology(2008)
5.7

Medical student Ted Grey graduates at the top of his class and quickly joins an elite pathology program, whose top students invite him into their circle. There he uncovers a gruesome secret: They play a game in which one tries to commit the perfect, undetectable murder, then the others compete to determine the victim's cause of death.



Hostel: Part III
5.089

Set in Las Vegas, the film centers on a man who attends his best friend's bachelor party, unaware of an insidious agenda that plays into hunting humans.



One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

A petty criminal fakes insanity to serve his sentence in a mental ward rather than prison. He soon finds himself as a leader to the other patients—and an enemy to the cruel, domineering nurse who runs the ward.



Caged
Caged(2021)
6.3

An African American male is imprisoned and placed in solitary confinement after being found guilty of murdering his wife, as he's haunted by internal demons and his dead wife, and pushed to the breaking point by an abusive female guard.



The Belko Experiment
6.169

A group of eighty American workers are locked in their office and ordered by an unknown voice to participate in a twisted game.



Escape
Escape(2024)
5.4

A young man becomes convinced that the solution to all his problems is to live in jail, and he will do whatever it takes to get it.



Multiverse
6.632

Four brilliant university students are forced to confront themselves in terrifying ways when their Quantum Physics experiment leads to an entangled parallel existence that leaves them questioning who they are and what is real.



Control
Control(2004)
6.055

Lee Ray Oliver, a death row inmate, is given a second chance at life if he agrees to undergo a new chemical treatment used to modify behavior.



Brubaker
Brubaker(1980)
7.071

The new warden of a small prison farm in Arkansas tries to clean it up of corruption after initially posing as an inmate.



Alive
Alive(2003)
5.814

Tenshu is imprisoned and sentenced to death for murdering the men who raped his girlfriend. However, he manages to survive his execution and is presented with an option: face another execution attempt or subject himself to their bizarre and dangerous experiments.



Escape from Alcatraz

San Francisco Bay, January 18, 1960. Frank Lee Morris is transferred to Alcatraz, a maximum security prison located on a rocky island. Although no one has ever managed to escape from there, Frank and other inmates begin to carefully prepare an escape plan.



Dog Pound
Dog Pound(2010)
7.2

Three juvenile delinquents arrive at a correctional center and are put under the care of an experienced guard.



Senseless
Senseless(1998)
6.2

A student gets his senses enhanced by an experimental drug. But abuse is not an option.



Cruel Intentions 3
4.836

Meet Cassie, Jason and Patrick, three amoral college students who, through a series of sexual wagers, take malicious pleasure in ruining the lives of their fellow classmates.



Lock Up
Lock Up(1989)
6.815

Frank Leone is nearing the end of his prison term for a relatively minor crime. Just before he is paroled, however, Warden Drumgoole takes charge. Drumgoole was assigned to a hell-hole prison after his administration was publicly humiliated by Leone, and has now arrived on the scene to ensure that Leone never sees the light of day.



Men Behind the Sun
6.2

The film is a graphic depiction of the war atrocities committed by the Japanese at Unit 731, the secret biological weapons experimentation unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. The film details the various cruel medical experiments Unit 731 inflicted upon the Chinese and Soviet prisoners at the tail-end of the war.



Hostel: Part II
5.8

Three American college students studying abroad are lured to a Slovakian hostel, and discover the grim reality behind it.



In a Glass Cage
6.8

A mysterious teenager named Ángelo cares for Klaus, a German doctor with a dark past who lives trapped in an iron lung.



Patty Hearst
5.602

The true story of a rich girl who was abducted by American revolutionaries in the 1970's. Her time spent with her captors made her question herself and her way of life and she joined forces with the cause that her abductors were fighting for. This created a US scandal and Patty Hearst has become a pop culture fixture.



Clemency
Clemency(2019)
6.3

Years of carrying out death row executions have taken a toll on prison warden Bernadine Williams. As she prepares to execute another inmate, Bernadine must confront the psychological and emotional demons her job creates, ultimately connecting her to the man she is sanctioned to kill.



Die
Die(2010)
4.672

Six people, each of them is on the road to self-destruction. They wake up in cells in a surreal facility, without knowing how they got there or why.



Corrective Measures
4.975

Set in San Tiburon, the world's most dangerous maximum-security penitentiary and home to the world's most treacherous superpowered criminals, where tensions among the inmates and staff heighten, leading to anarchy that engulfs the prison and order is turned upside down.



Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal

An examination that goes beyond the celebrity-driven headlines and dives into the methods used by Rick Singer, the man at the center of the shocking 2019 college admissions scandal, to persuade his wealthy clients to cheat an educational system already designed to benefit the privileged.



The Rules of Attraction

The incredibly spoiled and overprivileged students of Camden College are a backdrop for an unusual love triangle between a drug dealer, a virgin and a bisexual classmate.



No Man of God
6.582

The complicated relationship that formed between the FBI analyst Bill Hagmaier and serial killer Ted Bundy during Bundy's final years on death row.



Insanitarium
5.2

After he's institutionalized in order to cover for his sister, a young man encounters a doctor who is turning his patients into flesh-eating psychopaths.



Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile

A chronicle of the crimes of Ted Bundy, from the perspective of his longtime girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer, who refused to believe the truth about him for years.



The Prince
7.3

Chile, 1970. During a night of heavy drinking, Jaime, a lonely 20-year-old young man, is sentenced to prison. There, he meets “The Stallion”, an older and respected man in whom he finds protection, and from whom he learns about love and loyalty. But as their relationship grows stronger, “The Stallion” faces the violent power struggles within the prison.



Pacto de Fuga
7.5

During the last years of Pinochet's military regime, a group of militants from the "Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front" plan a prison break of political prisoners, through a tunnel that will take them 18 months to dig.



The Good Neighbor
6.208

Two high school filmmakers decide to create the illusion of a haunting on an unsuspecting neighbor.



Jailbait
Jailbait(2014)
5.293

A gritty coming of age thriller about a young girl sent to juvenile prison for the murder of her abusive step father. The film follows Anna Nix's journey into the dark world of an all girls jail where she discovers complex relationships, drugs, mental illness and her eventual search for redemption.



Kill Theory
5.318

While celebrating a graduation at a secluded vacation home, a group of college students find themselves targeted by a sadistic killer who forces them to play a deadly game of killing one another in order to survive.



Altered States
6.7

A research scientist explores the boundaries and frontiers of consciousness. Using sensory deprivation and hallucinogenic mixtures from native American shamans, he explores these altered states of consciousness and finds that memory, time, and perhaps reality itself are states of mind.



Asylum
Asylum(1972)
6

A young psychiatrist applies for a job at a mental asylum and must pass a test by interviewing four patients. He must figure out which of the patients, is in fact, the doctor that he would be replacing if hired.



7 Prisoners
7.1

An impoverished teen seeking to escape the clutches of a human trafficker must weigh living up to his moral code against his struggle to survive.



Prison
Prison(1987)
5.7

After Charles Forsyth was sent to the electric chair for a crime he didn't commit, he forever haunts the prison where he was executed. Flash forward several years when the prison is reopened, under the control of its new warden Eaton Sharpe, a former security guard who framed Charlie. When prisoners are ordered to break down the wall to the execution room, they unknowingly release the angry spirit of Charles Forsyth, a powerful being distributing his murderous rage to all, leading up to the Warden himself.



Cell 211
Cell 211(2009)
7.448

The story of two men on different sides of a prison riot -- the inmate leading the rebellion and the young guard trapped in the revolt, who poses as a prisoner in a desperate attempt to survive the ordeal.



Titicut Follies
7.271

A stark and graphic portrayal of the conditions that existed at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and documents the various ways the inmates are treated by the guards, social workers, and psychiatrists.



In Hell
In Hell(2003)
6.588

A man must survive a prison where hardened criminals battle to the death for the warden's entertainment.



Gossip
Gossip(2000)
5.811

For a class project, three college students decide to invent an unfounded rumor about the most popular girl on campus. But as the rumor spreads, it begins to spiral out of control.



They Found Hell
4.887

When a group of gifted college students run a secret teleportation experiment, they accidentally open a portal to another dimension, trapping them in Hell. One by one they are hunted, tortured and killed by the denizens of Hell who are bent on stealing their souls.



Apt Pupil
Apt Pupil(1998)
6.5

One day in 1984, Todd Bowden, a brilliant high school boy fascinated by the history of Nazism, stumbles across an old man whose appearance resembles that of Kurt Dussander, a wanted Nazi war criminal. A month later, Todd decides to knock on his door.



Detainment
6.697

Two ten year-old boys are detained by police under suspicion of abducting and murdering a toddler.



Vile
Vile(2011)
4.976

A group of people awaken to find themselves prisoners in a mysterious house with no means of escape. They are each outfitted with electronic devices attached to the base of their skulls. The chemicals that the brain produces when in pain are collected by the devices, and when it collects a predetermined amount, the doors will be opened. In order to escape, they must hurt themselves and each other.



400 Days
400 Days(2015)
4.4

4 would be astronauts spend 400 days in a land locked space simulator to test the psychological effects of deep space travel but, when something goes terribly wrong and they are forced to leave the simulation, they discover that everything on earth has changed. Is this real or is the simulation on a higher level than they could have ever imagined?



The Contestant
6.86

The incredible true story of a man who lived for 15 months trapped inside a small room, naked, starving and alone... and completely unaware that his life was being broadcast on national TV in Japan, to over 15 million viewers a week.



Instinct
Instinct(1999)
6.493

In a prison for the criminally insane, deranged anthropologist Ethan Powell is set to be examined by a bright young psychiatrist, Theo Caulder. Driven by ambition and a hunger for the truth, Caulder will eventually risk everything—even put his very life on the line—in a harrowing attempt to understand the bizarre actions of this madman.



Play Dead
Play Dead(2022)
6.112

Criminology student Chloe fakes her own death to break into a morgue, in order to retrieve a piece of evidence that ties her younger brother to a crime gone wrong. Once inside, she discovers that a sadistic coroner is using the corpses for his sick and twisted business, and when he realises that Chloe still has a pulse, a terrifying game of cat and mouse ensues.



Stoic
Stoic(2009)
5.2

A heated game of poker causes three men incarcerated for nonviolent offenses to brutalize their cellmate before taking drastic measures in order to cover up their crime.



Sons
Sons(2024)
6.785

Eva, an idealistic prison officer, is faced with the dilemma of her life when a young man from her past gets transferred to the prison where she works. Without revealing her secret, Eva asks to be moved to the young man’s ward – the toughest and most violent in the prison. Here begins an unsettling psychological thriller, where Eva’s sense of justice puts both her morality and future at stake.



Mazes and Monsters
4.3

Bound together by a desire to play "Mazes and Monsters," Robbie and his four college classmates decide to move the board game into the local cavern. Robbie loses his mind, and the line between reality and fantasy fuse into a harrowing nightmare.



Brainstorm
7.9

Neto is a middle class teenager living a normal life. After his father finds a marijuana cigarette on his pocket, he is sent to a mental institution, where he gets to know a completely absurd and inhumane reality in which people are devoured by a corrupt and cruel system.



The Possession Experiment

When a student takes on a theology project, he taps into another side that had been hidden away from him.



The Show
The Show(2017)
5.7

An unsettling look at reality television, where a disturbing game show has its contestants ending their lives for the public's enjoyment.



The Killing Room
5.7

Four volunteers sign up for what initially appears to be a typical paid research study, only to discover that they've unwittingly become involved with a classified government program that was said to have been terminated nearly two decades ago.



Beyond Re-Animator

Once again tampering with mother nature to disastrous results, Dr. Herbert West continues his research while serving time in a maximum security prison for his previous exploits. West's limited prison-cell experiments are suddenly interrupted by the arrival of a new prison doctor and the brother of the girl who suffered from West's experiments 13 years earlier.



Higher Power
5.1

When the Universe decides what it wants, it's pointless to resist. With his family's life at stake, Joseph Steadman finds himself the unwilling test subject of a maniacal scientist in a battle that could save the world – or destroy it.



Saw
Saw(2003)
7

David, an orderly at a hospital, tells his horrific story of being kidnapped and forced to play a vile game of survival.



Harrison Bergeron
6.7

"All men are not created equal. It is the purpose of the Government to make them so." This is the premise of the Showtime film adaption of Kurt Vonnegut's futuristic short story Harrison Bergeron. The film centers around a young man (Harrison) who is smarter than his peers, and is not affected by the usual "Handicapping" which is used to train all Americans so everyone is of equal intelligence.



Down by Love
6

A man, a woman. A prison director, his inmate. An impossible love, a true story.



Elephant Song
7.1

A psychiatrist is drawn into a complex mind game when he questions a disturbed patient about the disappearance of a colleague.



Barbed Wire Dolls
4.6

Maria, an unfortunate young woman, kills her rapist father in self-defense, and is later tried, sentenced, and shipped off to a woman's penitentiary where she and her fellow inmates are subjected to psychological and sexual abuse at the hands of a psychotic lesbian warden.



Dead Man on Campus
5.5

Two college roommates venture out to identify a fellow student, who is most likely to commit suicide as it will help them pass the semester.



Infinitum: Subject Unknown

Jane is the subject of a twisted science experiment where she is placed in a parallel world and is forced to find a way to either alter her reality or be stuck in a time-loop, destined to repeat the same test over and over again, with no memory of her doing it before. But with each 'reset' she starts to retain fragments of memory. With clues pointing to the mysterious Wytness Quantum Research Centre, she tries to find a way out. (The film was shot entirely on an iPhone during the UK’s first lockdown.)



The Match
The Match(2021)
6.1

Inspired by true events from the spring of 1944 when the Nazis organized a football match between a team of camp inmates and an elite Nazi team on Adolf Hitler's birthday. A match the prisoners are determined to win, no matter what happens.



OtherLife
OtherLife(2017)
6.383

Ren Amari is the driven inventor of a revolutionary new drug. OtherLife expands the brain's sense of time and creates virtual reality directly in the user's mind. With OtherLife, mere seconds in real life feel like hours or days of exciting adventures. As Ren and her colleagues race around the clock to launch OtherLife, the government muscles in to use the drugs as a radical solution to prison overcrowding. They will create virtual cells where criminals serve long sentences in just minutes of real time. When Ren resists, she finds herself an unwilling guinea pig trapped in a prison cell in her mind. She must escape before she descends into madness, and then regain control of OtherLife before others suffer the same fate.



Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS

Ilsa, a warden at a Nazi death camp that conducts experiments on prisoners, strives to prove that women can withstand more pain and suffering than men, and therefore should be allowed to fight on the frontlines.



Caged Heat
4.994

A young woman is convicted on drug offenses and sent to a women's penitentiary run by a repressed and oppressive female warden. When the prison's sadistic doctor begins conducting illegal "therapeutic" experiments on the inmates, the ladies plot their revenge.



Girl in the Box
6.7

The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.



The Curve
The Curve(1998)
5.444

Two roommates plan to kill a third to take advantage of college policy giving a 4.0 grade to a suicide's roommates.



Real
Real(2013)
6.2

Neurosurgeon Koichi uses an experimental technique to enter the brain of his beloved Atsumi, who is in a coma after attempting suicide. In his quest, Koichi drifts steadily further into the sweltering marshes of the spirit. It is soon no longer clear what is real and what is not.



Eileen
Eileen(2023)
5.882

During a bitter 1964 Massachusetts winter, young secretary Eileen becomes enchanted by Rebecca, the glamorous new counselor at the prison where she works. Their budding friendship takes a twisted turn when Rebecca reveals a dark secret — throwing Eileen onto a sinister path.



Flatliners
5.6

Five medical students, hoping to understand the mystery of what lies beyond life, embark on a dangerous experiment. When their hearts are stopped for a short period of time, they have a near-death experience…



Charlie Says
5.9

Three young women were sentenced to death in the infamous Manson murder case, but when the death penalty was lifted, their sentence became life imprisonment. One young graduate student was sent in to teach them – and through her we witness their transformations as they face the reality of their horrific crimes.



Women's Prison Massacre

Emanuelle is framed by a corrupt D.A. while investigating a drug smuggling operation and has to tough it out under lock and key, dealing with a strict warden and abusive guards.



Exam
Exam(2009)
6.7

Eight talented candidates have reached the final stage of selection to join the ranks of a mysterious and powerful corporation. Entering a windowless room, where an armed guard keeps watch, they are given 80 minutes to answer one simple question.



Phobias
Phobias(2021)
4.5

Five dangerous patients, suffering from extreme phobias at a government testing facility, are put to the ultimate test under the supervision of a crazed doctor and his quest to weaponize fear.



Prison 77
Prison 77(2022)
7.1

Modelo Prison. Barcelona, 1977. Manuel, a young accountant, imprisoned and awaiting trial for embezzlement, faces a sentence of 6 to 8 years, a disproportionate punishment for the crime committed. Together with his cellmate Pino, he joins forces with COPEL, a collective fighting for the rights of ordinary prisoners and amnesty. A war for freedom breaks out that will bring the Spanish prison system to its knees. If things are changing outside, they’ll have to do the same inside. A tale of friendship, solidarity and freedom, inspired in true events.



The Prison
7.1

An imprisoned ex-police inspector discovers that the entire penitentiary is controlled by an inmate running a crime syndicate and becomes part of the crime empire.



Deep
Deep(2021)
6.4

Four insomniac med school students are lured into a neuroscience experiment that spirals out of control and must find a way out before it’s too late.



Instinct
Instinct(2019)
4.9

Nicoline, a criminal psychologist, begins work at a prison where one of her new cases, Idris — an apparently reformed sex offender — is preparing for release after five years of confinement. Despite her professional misgivings, she becomes infatuated with her charismatic, manipulative patient.



Murder-Set-Pieces
3.878

A ferocious, misogynistic, and morally deprived serial killer is active in Las Vegas. Obsessed with the collapse of the Twin Towers, and with Nazi tendencies, he even targets underage girls.



Nefarious
Nefarious(2023)
6.757

On the day of his scheduled execution, a convicted serial killer gets a psychiatric evaluation during which he claims he is a demon, and further claims that before their time is over, the psychiatrist will commit three murders of his own.



Battle of Memories
6.6

A man becomes involved in a memory manipulation operation to try and regain lost memories. He thinks the exercise may help repair his failed marriage, but accidentally ends up with the mind of a serial killer.



The Cell
The Cell(2000)
6.3

A psychotherapist journeys inside a comatose serial killer in the hopes of saving his latest victim.



P Storm
P Storm(2019)
6.438

Liu Yue Ping reports to the ICAC about a rich 2G Cao Yuen Yuen who bribed officers of the Hong Kong Correctional Services (HKCS) from inside the prison. William Luk decides to infiltrate the prison as an inmate to conduct his investigation, while his partner Ching Tak Ming and Chief Inspector Lau Po-keung back him up from the outside.

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