The Wave (2008)

Professor Rainer's sociological experiment with his students on autocracy will have terrifying and unexpected consequences, as it soon ceases to be a game.

While the causes that lead the students to behave in such a way could have been explored more, it is also true that the abrupt change in their behaviour in less than a week detracts from the film's verisimilitude.

However, we must not forget that it is fiction, and that the rise of Nazism was just as crazy.

What the film succeeds in conveying is the ease with which totalitarianism can brew in a society prone to it, such as 1930s Germany with its problems of unemployment and inflation.

Similarly, the young people in the story feel alone, misunderstood, unmotivated and without family support, making them easy prey for the wave.

It is not unreasonable to think that we could be unwittingly moving towards an autocratic society, as the gradual loss of rights would be almost imperceptible.

But by the time we want to react, it may already be too late and the wave may have got out of hand.