Release Date: September 26, 2012
Director: Craig Zobel
Stars: Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker, Pat Healy
Runtime: 90 min
On an ordinary and particularly busy Friday at a fictitious restaurant called Chickwich, the manager, Sandra (Ann Dowd), is upset since a shipment of pickles and bacon didn’t come in. Soon, a man claiming to be a police officer calls and complains that a pretty, young blonde employee has stolen from a customer. From the orders of the authoritative stranger, Sandra takes the accused, Becky (Dreama Walker), to a back room.
This causes stress for everyone involved. Each new person who comes on the phone gets tricked into participating in Becky’s sexual humiliation. No one gets left unharmed.
When ‘no one gets unharmed’ is said, don’t expect a violent assault with weaponry on these unsuspecting individuals, it is more simply an assault on their minds.
No one is harmed as much as Becky herself, the biggest victim of them all. The others are just taking part in listening to the odd stranger, while she is the one being humiliated… One thing that is frustrating about the feature is how the people simply listen to the stranger with hardly any questions asked. Sure, he claims to be an officer of the law and he might very well seem so to him, but we the audience know this dramatic irony to not be the case. However, we must all ask ourselves what we would do in a situation such as this. This film is just a true test of how far one would go to obey the law. I’d like to say that I wouldn’t obey a weird guy on the phone who claims he’s an officer who will be at the restaurant soon, I’m not sure if I could tell anyone convincingly that I wouldn’t listen to him… And that is a majority of peoples’ state of mind.
Whilst the concepts embedded in the feature are extremely fascinating, the film is sometimes slow and slightly frustrating. One of the only ridiculous and frustrating things about the feature really is how they freely listen to him. We know he is really not an officer of the law, but they don’t. These frustrating aspects of it make it so unique and fascinating, and also so realistic. They are also necessary to the feature, otherwise Compliance wouldn’t be the great taut crime thriller it actually is.
The characters are well-characterized as those who are willing to obey the law at any cost, and Becky as an innocent girl who is extremely victimized. Each performer portrays each character realistically and with ease. That’s a thing about low-budget features, the actors are always so genuine and talented. Dreama Walker says she will be a great leading performer, and Ann Dowd and the eerie Pat Healy (as a sadistic, authoritative prank-caller) do a magnificent job. No matter how slow this feature may be, it is nonetheless extremely compelling. It gets disturbing, thought-provoking and inarguably unsettling, but it is so well done and so hard to look away. It’s even more disturbing to know someone actually did this. The restaurant may be fictitious, but the story is not, and Zobel does a great job of writing the true story to life.
In a nutshell: Compliance is an unsettling film that is extremely memorable. While slow, it has fascinating and thought-provoking concepts and genuine performances make this one of the best disturbing features of 2012.
85/100
Good review.
The worse part of this story is that it is fairly accurate to how people would behave. There have been a number of studies that confirm people will do some horrible things if they even minimally believe they are being directed by an authority figure.
Thanks! That’s an interesting psych experiment haha! I can believe it though, unfortunately…
Good review Daniel! Really want to see this but have no idea if it’s even gonna come out in the UK. This sounds right up my street.
Thanks! Hopefully it does, it really deserves to be seen!
By the way, Chris, this comes to UK theaters March 1st, if I’m not mistaken!
Just checked and you’re right it does, I’ll definitely be trying to check it out, although it remains to be seen whether it’ll reach my blockbuster-only multiplex.
This is a limited release so that might be iffy… Uh, I’d be delighted to lend you my copy we were the same regions… Apparently Blu-ray’s can play practically any region, but it isn’t a Blu-ray disc, unfortunately… Haha. Definitely seek it when you get the chance!
Yeah Blu rays are region free I think but not DVDs for some reason! Appreciate the thought, thanks Dan 🙂
Damn