Capsule Reviews: <i>Compliance</i>

Capsule Reviews: Compliance

Quick-hit movie reviews for the masses.

Craig Zobel's chilling 2012 ripped-from-the-headlines Compliance is hard to sit through. Unlike many films that claim to be "based on true events," Compliance seems to faithfully recreate an astonishing true tale of victimization and abuse that actually happened in 2004.

The film serves as an eye-opening social experiment that explores just how vulnerable we all are to authority figures like police officers—or, in this case, a man posing by phone as a police officer. On what seems like just another typical day at a fast food chain restaurant, things fall apart fast when this scam artist calls and asks to talk with the store's manager about one of her employees. What follows is a relentlessly unsettling story that will leave you squirming in your seats and probably yelling at the characters onscreen to stop it.

The manager Sandra (Ann Dowd) is an easy mark: low on self-esteem and already resentful/jealous of the petite blonde teenage bombshell who works the counter Becky (Dreama Walker). The ease with which the prank caller establishes authority over Sandra is truly frightening. He quickly convinces her that Becky is a suspect in a theft, then orders her to detain the young woman in the back room until police can arrive. Becky's long, drawn-out humiliation escalates from there: first she's instructed (by the caller, through Sandra) to take off all her clothes for a strip search. Soon, Sandra is bringing in her dopey and drunk fiance Van (Bill Camp) to watch the naked Becky while she gets back to work out in the restaurant—those chicken sandwiches won't sell themselves! The caller then directs Van to spank Becky. The caller continues to give orders, and soon enough Van is forcing Becky to perform oral sex on him.

Once the horrific prank is realized, it's all too late. Becky has already been traumatized for life. What we're left with is a film where the victims of a scam are duped into becoming the perpetrators of the abuse on a completely innocent victim. You'll find yourself despising not only the caller, but Sandra, Van, and everyone else working at the restaurant who knows Becky is being held in the back room yet just shrugs and goes back to work, and rightly so. None of them come out of this unscathed. It's a searing indictment on just how weak human willpower can be. Sandra hesitates slightly at certain bizarre requests from the "cop," but in every instance eventually does as she's told. Becky resists orders, but ultimately in every instance does as she's told. None of the restaurant staff think to call the police to verify the caller's identity. The power of Compliance is that it leaves you questioning what you would've done in the same situation.

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