If you love thrillers, or perhaps find pleasure in others killing each other, or you're just a Psychology major, "The Belko Experiment" is an AMAZING movie to watch. To witness and see how humans think, feel, and act when put in a situation or environment that puts their lives, their self-interests, at risk.
As a brief summary (I promise not too many spoilers), the movie takes place in Bottega, Colombia. A government building was set up in an isolated location away from the cities and the public. The building goes on lock down with absolutely no way out, no signal connection, and no landlines.
A mysterious ominous voice over the intercom announces that everyone must comply with the rules and initiate action within a certain time frame or else everyone will die. The abrupt deaths when no one complied... I don't want to spoil that for you. GO WATCH THE EXPERIMENT!! (It is not a real experiment that has been conducted. Although, based on research that has been conducted and discovered, I believe the outcomes are realistically possible based on experiments done in the past such as the 1961 Milgram Experiment.)
The purpose of the movie is to show what human nature consists of. How we are susceptible to be obedient to authority figures, how willing we are to go against those orders and how we act based on our own self-interests.
The movie was written by James Gunn, the same director for "Guardians of the Galaxy." This is much more of a gory violent social science film than talking, shooting, violent, and drunk raccoons called Rocket. (By the way, if you haven't seen "Guardians of the Galaxy," also a must see!)
The question lies in what those self-interests are, how valuable they are to you and what you would do to the extreme for them. Now, to a few people, this may seem like common sense. Makes sense, right? We all know what its like to fight for or stand up for something or someone we love, believe in, invested in, or whatever the self-interest it may be. What you are willing to do to gain, keep, or reach those self-interests depends on the environment you are in and what resources and options are available to you.
Survival of the fittest is the independent variable: whoever is the strongest (mentally, physically, strategic, whatever the environment requires you to have to succeed). Another good question lies in who created this environment. God? People? The government? What are their interests? To whose benefit is this environment set up for?
I love how each one of the characters that the director chose to show us their ways of feeling, thinking, and behavior during certain points of the film to show how different approaches are taken for each individual and how their survival instincts kick in either physically, emotionally, fight or flight, or intellectually.
Some choose to run, some chose to dictate their interests over everyone else's and take control. Or some just try to be as rational and as quick as possible. Different personality traits, religious beliefs, and deep down dirty evil human traits dictate their actions throughout each scene. Everyone who was once friends with each other soon was killing each other for survival, or perhaps out of confusion, panic, anger, etc.
If you love analyzing movies, human behavior, and thinking outside the box of your normal everyday life, or again just enjoy gory films and murder, this is a phenomenal film to observe!
