Compliance – The Movie

From MagnoliaPictures:

When a police officer tells you to do something, you do it. Right?

Inspired by true events, COMPLIANCE tells the chilling story of just how far one might go to obey a figure of authority. On a particularly busy day at a suburban Ohio fast food joint, high-strung manager Sandra (Ann Dowd (Garden State) receives a phone call from a police officer saying that an employee, a pretty young blonde named Becky (newcomer Dreama Walker) has stolen money from a customer. Convinced she’s only doing what’s right, Sandra commences the investigation, following step-by-step instructions from the officer at the other end of the line, no matter how invasive they become. As we watch, we ask ourselves two questions: “Why don’t they just say no?” and the more troubling, “Am I certain I wouldn’t do the same?”

The second feature from director Craig Zobel (the man behind the 2007 Sundance hit Great World of Sound), COMPLIANCE recounts this riveting nightmare in which the line between legality and reason is hauntingly blurred. The cast delivers startlingly authentic performances that make the appalling events unfolding onscreen all the more difficult to watch — but impossible to turn away from. Delving into the complex psychology of this real-life story, COMPLIANCE proves that sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.

Why isn’t it easy to “just say no….”

Related Situationist posts:

• Would You Obey?
• The Situation of Penn State Bystanders
• The Bystander Effect at Penn State
• Bystanders in Child Abductions
• The Situation of Bystanders,
• The Situation of Gang Rape,
• The Situation of Helping,
• The Situational Effect of Groups
• Solomon Asch’s Famous Compliance Experiment
• The Situation of Bullying
• The Situation of Hazing, Torture, Gender, and Tears
  
• Journalists as Social Psychologists & Social Psychologists as Entertainers
• RADIOLAB on the Situation of Badness
• Situation, McDonalds, & Tort Law
• Assistance and Obedience
• The obedience experiments at 50
• The Milgram Experiment Yet Again (Again!)
• Milgram Experiment at 50 Years
• Shocking for Money
• The Power of the Situation
• Video on the Original Milgram Experiment,
• Milgram-Inspired Movie
• The Situation of Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiments,
• Milgram Replicated on French TV – ‘The Game of Death’,
• A Shocking Situation,
• Zimbardo on Milgram and Obedience – Part I,
• The Case for Obedience,
• Replicating Milgram’s Obedience Experiment – Yet Again,
• Jonestown (The Situation of Evil) Revisited,
• Milgram Remake, and
• The Milgram Experiment Today?