At one point during the showing of ‘Compliance,’ around a third of the audience walked out apparently upset or disgusted. Apparently they had come to see a movie without reading even a basic synopsis, totally ignored the BBFC warning at the beginning, and weren’t happy with the results. The subject matter of ‘Compliance’ is controversial and chilling, but I certainly knew that when I walked into the theatre.
I came across a newspaper article about the event this movie is based on the other week, and having seen the evidence, am glad to say that this is one of very few films to pull the ‘based on true events’ trick and get away with it. An introduction assures us ‘Nothing has been exaggerated,’ and this claim seems supported by the correlation of the two stories.
On a busy Friday night shift at a fast food restaurant, flustered manager Sandra (Ann Dowd) receives a phone call to the office from a man claiming to be ‘Officer Daniels,’ and dealing with a a theft allegation against Sandra’s young employee Becky (Dreama Walker). Faced with a caller who claims to have CCTV evidence and the big boss on the other line, poor Sandra agrees to co-operate with Officer Daniels until he can get police to their location.
In the bizarre ordeal that follows, Sandra and several colleagues are manipulated into subjecting Becky to horrendous abuse and sexual humiliation by the caller. The way in which this plays out sounds unbelievable: “You stripped a girl naked cos someone on the phone told you to?” an interviewer later pushes. This is perhaps the same response people who haven’t seen the movie would give to the situation. But as Sandra insists, “He always had an answer for everything.” And this guy really does. What makes this movie work as an intense thriller is the perfect screenwriting by director Craig Zobel, which not only words the story, but makes every step of Officer Daniels’ manipulation somehow believable.
The caller is always quick to remind the colleagues, “I must insist you address me as Sir. I am an Officer of the Law, you need to calm down now!” It is not just the colleagues he sweet-talks into carrying out his perverse fantasies, but he regularly talks to Becky, intimidating her into…compliance. The overall psychological affect of the caller’s abuse is what makes us believe in the reactions, and just how this crazy incident could have occurred.
Despite the content warnings, ‘Compliance’ is not an exploitation movie, and has very little in the way of nudity or on-screen abuse. Most of the humiliation is implied or not shown explicitly, and in context, it is actually a very modest portrayal of the ordeal. The point of the movie, as explained at the start, is the psychological experimentation into how people behave under the influence of an authority figure.
It is a portrait of human behaviour, and there is moving emphasis on our attitudes toward each character, Sandra in particular. Although she is the main perpetrator, Dowd’s performance and again, clever screenwriting, conjure up strange sympathy for her and her situation. She really is a victim too.
‘Compliance’ is a gripping, intense and very realistic independent crime thriller, and in the same way that Wes Craven’s ‘Last House On The Left’ (1972) was a very well-made portrayal of a gruesome story, I give it 4.5/5.
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