Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
On a particularly busy day at a suburban Ohio fast food restaurant, manager Sandra receives a phone call from a police officer saying that an employee has stolen money from a customer.
Compliance is a genuinely unsettling and singular film built around the real-life strip-search scam cases, drawing explicit parallels to the Milgram obedience experiments. Its novelty is high because few films so clinically and unflinchingly interrogate the psychology of compliance and authority in an everyday setting — the mundane fast-food backdrop amplifying the horror. The plot is tightly constructed and credible despite being almost unbearably uncomfortable to watch, earning it an above-average mark. Acting is competent, with Ann Dowd delivering a quietly remarkable performance as Sandra, though the ensemble is uneven. Cinematography is functional and deliberately unglamorous — appropriate but not distinguished. The ending is effective in its matter-of-fact delivery of real-world aftermath, though it deflates somewhat by leaning on title cards rather than dramatic resolution.