By Robert Scucci | Published
Looking to spend the rest of your evening upset beyond belief? If you’re a glutton for pain, punishment, and some of the most uncomfortable escalations you’ve ever witnessed in a movie, 2012’s Compliance checks every box to ensure that you end your day in silence in the shower while the hot water burns the outermost layer of skin on your body in order to cleanse you from what I consider to be one of the most invasive thrillers I have ever seen.
Based on real events you wish weren’t, Compliance exists because we still have a long way to go to curb our willingness to blindly listen to authority figures. It’s not an easy watch, but it’s the best kind of crash course in what makes a thriller so effective that it stays with you for days.
Most upsetting is how easily things escalate when a person believes their livelihood is in danger after receiving a series of vague threats over the phone. A disturbing vision of power dynamics in the heat of battle, Compliance will make you feel sick to your stomach through its cautionary tale about taking everything you hear at face value without questioning your antagonist’s motives.
The setup and the phone call
Compliance takes place in 2012 Ohio, but is inspired by a series of strip-search phone scams that emerged in 2004 in Kentucky. We meet Sandra Frum (Ann Dowd), the manager of ChickWich, a suburban fast-food restaurant staffed primarily by high school and college students working for minimum wage.
Sandra is very nervous but apparently well-meaning, dealing with the usual headaches that come with running a fast food restaurant. Her Friday starts off on the wrong foot when she learns that the walk-in cooler was left open by the night shift, destroying $1,500 in inventory.
Already nervous about a last-minute delivery that won’t get her through the weekend, Sandra learns that the company has sent secret shoppers to her area to assess quality control, so everyone needs to be at their best. Things take a turn for the worse when she receives a call from a man identifying himself as Officer Daniels (Pat Healy), who accuses one of his cashiers, Becky (Dreama Walker), of stealing from a customer.
The worst type of climbing
Exhausted from the Friday night rush, Sandra immediately complies with Officer Daniels, who urges her to strip search Becky for the missing money. First, Becky’s clothes and bag are confiscated, but that’s not enough for Daniels, whose urgent tone and authoritative delivery prompt Sandra to continue the search. More concerned with keeping the restaurant running and impressing the company, Sandra tasks other employees with staying in line with Daniels, who forces each new participant to dig deeper into his so-called investigation.
Fortunately for Becky, several co-workers immediately know something is wrong, but the problem is twofold. They try to do what Sandra says because she’s their boss and their jobs are on the line, and Sandra follows orders because she thinks she’s talking to an officer who claims that Becky is not just a thief, but a person of interest in a more serious case involving her brother.
Compliance continues to venture into gruesome territory as Daniels ups the ante, forcing Becky into increasingly invasive situations at the hands of her boss. Running the restaurant in a panic, Sandra never once questions the caller and does everything he asks, waiting for the officers to arrive and close the investigation.
No job is worth this level of stress
As a daughter daddy, Compliance It was a difficult time because you never want to see your daughter be the victim of manipulation of this magnitude, especially at work. You want your child to be safe while learning to become a responsible young adult while working a part-time job to understand the real world before fully entering it.
Additionally, you want the person your child works for to be supportive. The film is a brutal commentary on how easily we appeal to authority without doing any due diligence, but it hits harder because incidents like this actually happen and teenagers like Becky haven’t lived enough life to instantly recognize that something is deeply wrong with the situation. Sandra, on the other hand, should in all respects be better informed.
A masterclass on what not to do when threatened by an invisible and supposed authority figure, Compliance gets under your skin but is absolutely worth the watch as it is a perfect thriller. But that doesn’t mean it won’t make you lose faith in humanity.
Compliance is streaming for free on Tubi.
