Movies like The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015)
The best movies like The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015) are Prison 77 (2022), Experimenter (2015) and The Experiment (2001). If The Stanford Prison Experiment hooked you with its thriller and drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Shawshank Redemption (1994)8.7/10 from 31,822 votes
- NewestHenry Johnson (2025)Released 2025
Prison 77 (2022)
Modelo Prison. Barcelona, 1977. A young accountant, awaiting trial for embezzlement with a possible 20 years sentence, joins a group of prisoners demanding amnesty.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisExperimenter (2015)
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.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Experiment (2001)
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.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Experiment (2010)
20 men are chosen to participate in the roles of guards and prisoners in a psychological study that ultimately spirals out of control.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStarred Up (2014)
19-year-old Eric, arrogant and ultra-violent, is prematurely transferred to the same adult prison facility as his estranged father. As his explosive temper quickly finds him enemies in both prison authorities and fellow inmates — and his already volatile relationship with his father is pushed past breaking point — Eric is approached by a volunteer psychotherapist, who runs an anger management group for prisoners. Torn between gang politics, prison corruption, and a glimmer of something better, Eric finds himself in a fight for his own life, unsure if his own father is there to protect him or join in punishing him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Wave (1981)
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.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLockdown (2000)
Avery (Jones) returns to college as a competitive swimmer after getting his life back on track. But his life takes another unexpected turn when he and his two friends (Bonds, Casseus) are wrongly accused of murder and end up in prison.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEscape from Pretoria (2020)
South Africa, 1978. Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee, two white political activists from the African National Congress imprisoned by the apartheid regime, put a plan in motion to escape from the infamous Pretoria Prison.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Wave (2008)
A school teacher discusses types of government with his class. His students find it too boring to repeatedly go over national socialism and believe that dictatorship cannot be established in modern Germany. He starts an experiment to show how easily the masses can become manipulated.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHunger (2008)
The story of Bobby Sands, the IRA member who led the 1981 hunger strike during The Troubles in which Irish Republican prisoners tried to win political status.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGhosted (2011)
‘GHOSTED’ tells a story of survival inside a British Prison. Jack a model prisoner, has kept his head down and done his time. After his wife confirms that she is leaving him, on the anniversary of their son’s death, the only thing that keeps him from going under is the new prisoner, Paul. Jack’s cell mate Ahmed, attempts to guide him on a path of salvation, a path that involves saving Paul from the clutches of the wing beast, Clay.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Escape from Alcatraz (1979)
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.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEscape (2024)
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.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisBirdman of Alcatraz (1962)
After killing a prison guard, convict Robert Stroud faces life imprisonment in solitary confinement. Driven nearly mad by loneliness and despair, Stroud's life gains new meaning when he happens upon a helpless baby sparrow in the exercise yard and nurses it back to health. Despite having only a third grade education, Stroud goes on to become a renowned ornithologist and achieves a greater sense of freedom and purpose behind bars than most people find in the outside world.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMidnight Express (1978)
Billy Hayes is caught attempting to smuggle drugs out of a country. The courts decide to make an example of him, sentencing him to more than 30 years in prison. Hayes has two opportunities for release: the appeals made by his lawyer, his family, and the American government, or the "Midnight Express".
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this25 Years of Innocence (2020)
Tomasz Komenda was 23 years old when his normal life was brutally interrupted. Overnight he was arrested, thrown into prison and charged with murder. Subsequent expert opinions confirmed his participation in the crime, and any evidence was against him. For nearly two decades in prison, he was beaten, intimidated, humiliated and on his own. Finally, after 18 years of imprisonment, prosecutors and a policeman appeared on his way, who decided to discover the truth behind the mysterious case of the detainee.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHenry Johnson (2025)
A quiet man is abruptly arrested without explanation, thrust into a surreal legal nightmare where truth and identity blur. As he fights to assert his innocence, he confronts a chilling system that seems more interested in control than justice.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Compliance (2012)
On a particularly busy day at a suburban Ohio fast food restaurant, manager Sandra receives a phone call from a police officer saying that an employee has stolen money from a customer.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPawn Sacrifice (2015)
During the height of the Cold War, American chess prodigy Bobby Fischer finds himself caught between two superpowers when he challenges the Soviet Empire.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisApt Pupil (1998)
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.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Last Castle (2001)
A court-martialed general rallies together 1200 inmates to rise against the system that put him away.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDead Man Walking (1995)
A death row inmate turns for spiritual guidance to a local nun in the days leading up to his scheduled execution for the murders of a young couple.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this7 Days in Entebbe (2018)
In 1976, four hijackers take over an Air France airplane en route from Tel Aviv to Paris and force it to land in Entebbe, Uganda. With 248 passengers on board, one of the most daring rescue missions ever is set in motion.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisIn the Name of the Father (1993)
A small-time Belfast thief, Gerry Conlon, is wrongly convicted of an IRA bombing in London, along with his father and friends, and spends 15 years in prison fighting to prove his innocence.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Machinist (2004)
Trevor, an insomniac lathe operator, experiences unusual occurrences at work and home. A strange man follows him everywhere, but no one else seems to notice him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLast Rampage (2017)
The true story of the infamous prison break of Gary Tison and Randy Greenwalt from the Arizona State prison in Florence, in the summer of 1978.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisCell 211 (2009)
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.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRoom 8 (2013)
Thrown to rot in a narrow and gloomy cell of a hideous Soviet prison, a weary new inmate struggles to come to terms with the new reality. Within the grey cage, an unwelcoming fellow convict cautions the newcomer not to touch the intriguingly mysterious red wooden box which rests on the lower bunk, moreover, not even think of opening it. Why is there so much secrecy about the contents of the box? Could there be hiding the means to his escape?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHello Herman (2012)
Set in the not so distant future, in Any Town USA, sixteen-years-old Herman Howards makes a fateful decision. He enters his suburban school and kills thirty nine students, two teachers, and a police officer. Just before his arrest, he emails his idol, famous journalist Lax Morales, sending him clips of the shootings captured with Herman's own digital camera. In the clips Herman tells Lax, "I want to tell my story on your show". Lax, haunted by his own past, is now face to face with Herman.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Stanford Prison Experiment?
The closest matches to The Stanford Prison Experiment are Prison 77 (2022), Experimenter (2015) and The Experiment (2001). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Stanford Prison Experiment?
People who watched The Stanford Prison Experiment most often go on to Prison 77 (2022), Experimenter (2015) and The Experiment (2001).
What is the highest-rated movie like The Stanford Prison Experiment?
The Shawshank Redemption (1994), rated 8.7/10 by 31,822 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Stanford Prison Experiment?
Henry Johnson (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Stanford Prison Experiment?
Yes: Experimenter (2015), The Experiment (2010) and Starred Up (2014).
How are movies similar to The Stanford Prison Experiment chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Stanford Prison Experiment, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.