For years, people questioned the ethics of Stanley Milgram’s infamous obedience experiments calling into question the intentional emotional distress inflicted upon the unknowing test subjects. Questionable though his tactics may have been, the fact that in 2015 every Psychology 101 class across the country is schooled in the teachings of Milgrim shows the lasting effects of his research. The film Experimenter, on the other hand, graphs the life of the controversial social scientist in a drearily scientific manner and will be forgotten moments after watching it. For all the intrigue and controversy surrounding Stanley Milgram, director/producer/writer Michael Almereyda is unable to conceive of a single moment of drama in his punishingly procedural biopic.

Well that’s not entirely true. The first 15-odd minutes plants the viewer in the epicenter of Milgram’s experiment and contains what is likely the most accomplished segment of the film. That’s not to say that it’s particularly good either. For one, the experiment – in a sterile room of gray lab coats, electric doohickies and polite (but potent) commands – is not nearly as tense as it could potentially be (especially for those familiar with the experiment) because there’s no context to the scene. The film has not built into that should-be payoff moment. Rather, they start with the money shot and move backwards. It’s like watching a porno Memento-style. Not for me.

For those unfamiliar with Milgram’s fated 1960s research, the social psychologist conducted a series of experiments testing people’s willingness to conform to an adverse scenario if prompted by an authority figure. As both a man of Jewish descent and a person struggling to come to terms with the darker side of human behavior, Milgram attempted to account for the atrocities of the Holocaust in his research. In large part, he wanted to answer just how someone can say, “I was just doing what I was told” when what they are told to do is beyond inhuman. In order to get a glimpse into the mindset of this passive obedience, Milgram assigned a test subject to a teaching role in which said teacher would administer increasingly higher voltages to a designated learner if the answer were incorrect. The set-up was of course a rouge – one that the “learner” was in on – as no actual shocks were administered and the learner was indeed the subject of study. What Milgram discovered though is that the vast majority of peoples – regardless of race, color or creed – would continue to shock the “learner” past the point of their screaming in protest so long as they were told that they would not have to accept responsibility for any physical harm. All it took was some polite prodding and most teachers carried on until the “learner” was silent and being shocked with 450 volts. To the layman, that’s one metric f*ckton of electricity.

The film’s greatest failing is in it’s dutiful (and incredibly boring) presentation of the facts. As Milgram, Peter Sarsgaard is tasked with detailing the most mundane of minutiae at the audience as if he were Ferris Bueller taking a day off. He informs us of the dates of the experiment, the names of those parties only sorta involved, even the times that certain documents were stamped or delivered. Almereyda is reaching for something – anything – that will give his film a sense of authority and having all the note cards does not an interesting film make. Rather, his product is film as timeshare presentation. It’s often oppressive un-artistic. There’s a few moments where Almereyda projects his characters in front of green screens so that it appears that they are imposed over black-and-white static images. It’s his most obvious ploy for aesthetic originality but it comes across as too weird and out-of-place for a movie that is so otherwise visually static. In effect, the experiment is ten times more distracting than it is imaginative.

As Milgram gets caught up in the aftermath of his acclaimed obedience experiment, we see the blow-back take hold of his professional and private life in boilerplate confessionals. Again, Sarsgaard turns to the camera and imparts how it all makes him feel. In a better film – one where we actually feel invested in the characters – the conceit may have succeeded but it is a Trump-sized failure here. From the performance side of the spectrum, the often strong Sarsgaard offers nothing special, most acutely because the role does not demand much of him. I would say that the performance were one-note but I believe that the onus falls on Almereyda’s disinterested script moreso than Sarsgaard’s interpretation. Also worthy of note, in the second half of the feature, Sarsgaard sports a Lincoln-styled neck beard that looks faker than Pamela Anderson’s breasts. In many ways, that sh*tty beard is representative of the movie at large in that no one stopped to question it and what it was doing in a movie in the first place. Seriously guys, that beard is beyond whack. As Milgram’s wife Sasha, Winona Ryder treads water and little more. Again, it comes down to an underwritten performance that relies exclusively on our familiarity with other, similarly shaped hardships. Insomuch as there is nothing unique to their relationship and nothing that makes us invested in them as characters, we watch their lives with the most reserved of interest. Just like the movie, they’re flat, forgettable and hard to care about.

CONCLUSION: Those wanting a deeper look into the life of Stanley Milgram ought look somewhere else as Experimenter is essentially devoid of drama. Yes, you’ll get the rough facts presented to you but the film is little more than an awkward list of bullet points presented with the tact of a Power Point Presentation.