Compliance is probably one of the most effective dramatizations of real events I have ever seen, precisely because, as I was watching, it was so hard to believe it was based on real events, or ever could be. It baffled me that anybody, anywhere could be so ignorant of their personal rights, or could cave in so completely to a self-proclaimed voice of authority.

It baffled the rest of the audience, too. Each time the situation escalated, I could hear people all around me groaning, “Oh, come on!” and, “Nobody’s that dumb!” And I felt that way myself, until we got home, did a bit of Googling, and found out that the movie was a virtual scene-by-scene recreation of events recorded on a security camera at a McDonald’s in Mount Washington, Kentucky.

The manager of the store gets a phone call from a man who says he’s a police officer investigating a theft, and that a girl working for her has the money. He talks the manager into bringing the girl into the office for a little bit of interrogation, and when the girl denies stealing anything, the caller talks the manager into strip-searching her. This is about the point where the audience started reacting vocally to the movie.

The manager is so completely taken in by the caller that she eventually draws several other employees at the store into the ruse to “guard” the girl. The caller eventually talks one of them into humiliating the girl by getting her to take off an apron, the only clothing she has on, then performing a more invasive search of her. This scene got the ultimate audience reaction: several people walked out, either disgusted or offended that anybody would put such an unbelievable event on film.

It’s only when the last employee refuses to comply that manager calls her boss and the hoax is exposed.

In the first half of the movie, events take place almost entirely within the fast-food store. Nobody in the audience knew for sure that the caller was a fraud until he was shown in the second half of the movie, making a sandwich in his kitchen at home. It was a savvy way for film maker Craig Zobel to ratchet up the disbelief. As the caller lounged in his desk chair, it became easy for the audience to dismiss the manager as simple, gullible, even stupid.

But if ever a movie could have used one of those “Where are they now?” montages at the end, it was this one. The short clips of security camera recordings in the YouTube link above hit me like a ton of bricks, even an hour after watching Compliance. Maybe it was that hour of shaking my head in disbelief that Zobel was going for. If so, then, Well done, sir, well done.