Compliance: Movie Review

Compliance: Movie Review

Cast: Dreama Walker, Ann Dowd, Pat Healy
Director: Craig Zobel

Based on actual events, Compliance is an insidious watch.

It centres on a fast food chain in middle America - it's a busy store and one which is facing a hectic Friday night with the possibility of soiled stock, a secret shopper and plenty of customers.

So, when manager Sandra (Ann Dowd) receives a call from an officer Daniels, telling her that one of her employees was believed to have stolen money from a customer, who was currently at the police station. With only a vague description of the employee, Sandra assumes it's the quiet Becky (Dreama Walker) and follows out the policeman's request to hold her in a back room until they get there.

And that's when things start to take a turn for the bizarre.

The officer tells them he won't be able to get there for a while - and they will have to strip search her for the cash. Gradually, the requests escalate into the utterly unbelievable - and the depraved.

Compliance is an uneasy, queasy watch.

There's revulsion that it is based on a real event (some 70 calls were made of a similar nature in America) and a sickening claustrophobia which pervades the whole thing. Using slow, swooping camera movements, Zobel manages to convey the atmosphere in the restaurant and the tense nature of the enclosed environment. Essentially, as you watch it unfold in a fixed space, it feels as if you are there - a fact made all the more uncomfortable in that actual CCTV footage exists of the real life incident.

Burrowing into your mind, Compliance taunts you with the nagging thought of "What would you do" as it unfolds - a surefire sign that the film works on a psychologically disturbing level and on a level which every instinct in your brain screams at you to deny.

Thanks to very real performances from Dowd and the victimised and very naked Dreama Walker, Compliance feels ugly to watch and will definitely induce squirming in your seat as they blindly obey authority. It's a fascinating expose of how people react to different positions of power.

A tangled mix of empowerment and ethical dilemmas, awash with a morally queasy investigation into why we don't question authority or what compels us to do what we do, Compliance demands you watch. But just don't be surprised if you feel like taking a wash afterwards thanks to its queasy and unsettling, but compelling nature.

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