The documentary Mister Organ opens as a routine business story: a New Zealand antiques shop, Bashford Antiques, hires a man to police its parking lot, where cars are aggressively clamped and owners are charged up to $760 to get them back. Journalist David Farrier covered the practice for The Spinoff, and the resulting attention pushed the government to introduce legislation banning extreme clamping fees.
But the story does not stay in the parking lot. The man hired to enforce the lot, Michael Organ, turns out to be a self-described lawyer and prince who is neither, and who has a prior charge connected to an elaborate yacht theft. As Farrier interviews Organ's victims and confronts Organ directly, the documentary turns into a portrait of a harassing, gaslighting figure who eventually obtains a key to Farrier's home, prompting Farrier to leave the country.
The Verge's review describes Mister Organ as a rare documentary that doubles as a psychological horror film, and notes that while it lacks the societal scope of other true-crime works, its intimate campaign of terror is deeply unsettling. For a business audience, the film's early scenes offer a cautionary tale about a consumer complaint escalating far beyond a simple regulatory fix. Mister Organ is streaming on Hoopla, Kanopy, and YouTube.