It took me places I did not want to go, got me in a mindset so infuriating I was angry at myself for thinking the thoughts I was.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 2, 2020

It's not an easy watch, which is kind of the point, and I'm not even sure what genre it is. Psychological horror? Thriller? But it will haunt and resonate.

| Sep 4, 2018

Compliance's underlying humanism and political conscience lift it beyond being a macho endurance test.

| Feb 22, 2018

Plausibly acted, if implausibly directed by Craig Zobel (Great World Of Sound), the credulity of this provocative scenario would snap had it not actually happened more than 70 times across 30 US states.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 1, 2017

The most disturbing aspect of Compliance is its implied complicity.

| Aug 11, 2017

A punchy and effective drama.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 22, 2013

Well as the film is performed, particularly by Dowd as the manager attempting to make order out of chaos, you can scarcely credit what happens.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 22, 2013

The film edges forward diffidently, never quite matching strength of craft to strength of idea. It's creepily beguiling even so ...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 21, 2013

Zobel's feature film brings out the creepy, banal horror of this culminating event, and the awful contemporary insights.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 21, 2013

Needs more than its "based on a true story" disclaimer to short-circuit our sceptical instinct.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 21, 2013

A riveting, horrifying film, shot through with beautifully observed moments of unwelcome truth.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 26, 2013

Compliance is one of the toughest sits of the movie year 2012. But it's an uncompromising and, in its way, honorable drama built upon a prank call that goes on and on, getting worse and worse for the people on the other end of the line.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 8, 2013

There's the adage that life is nasty, brutish and short. It's even worse when you're half-naked and locked in a supply room with your boss.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 22, 2012

Compliance is a difficult film to watch -- walkouts have been reported at more than one screening -- but it's also a calculating and intimate deconstruction of the greater social ills that our fast-food nation faces as a whole.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 7, 2012

This is one insistent film, more evocative of human behavior than movies that take fewer risks ever could be.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 6, 2012

So long as you can tolerate the frustration it fosters, it's hard not to appreciate such intelligent provocation.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 4, 2012

Like a John Hughes movie hijacked by Roman Polanski, this troubling indie effort lays bare the sadomasochism of the American workplace.

| Aug 31, 2012

A disturbing, fact-based look at the ways in which people can be bullied into bowing to the demands of authority figures.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 30, 2012

Zobel, a second-time feature filmmaker, has put together a skillful, sympathetic but unsparing re-enactment of a small-scale atrocity, and his cast plays it out with natural, understated performances.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 30, 2012

Zobel's masterful direction and screenplay heighten the distress of authority figures possessing unseen persuasion over naive employees, exposing a disturbing and haunting look at what some workers are willing to do in order to follow orders.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 30, 2012