Compliance

“Can I take your order?”

The catchphrase of employees at a fast food restaurant becomes their undoing in this hugely disturbing film by Craig Zobel, that is a painfully accurate dramatisation of just one of over 70 real prank calls made in the United States. Ann Dowd is magnificent as Sandra, the insecure manager of a ChickWich who receives a call, purportedly from a police officer. The caller (Pat Healy) accuses young employee Becky (Dreama Walker) of stealing, and convinces Sandra to isolate Becky in a back room and strip-search her. Over the course of 90 minutes, Zobel pushes the audience to the outer limits of discomfort as the caller’s demands escalate in cruelty and perversion – and are all obeyed.
Compliance is reminiscent of the famous Milgram experiments that show how people abandon their personal morals in deference to authority – an experiment inspired by Nazism during WWII. What makes it such a distressing viewing experience is how horrendously recognisable the setting is. Zobel’s screenplay captures not only the mundane intricacies of the fast-food industry, but the unpolished interactions between characters that are not evil, merely self-doubting.
The tension builds as Healy’s assured, affecting voice slowly manipulates Sandra and several others to take increasingly upsetting steps off the edge of rational behaviour. Zobel brilliantly shows the perceptual leaps people make when provided with slices of information – not just characters, but the audience too. Though showing far less nudity than your average adult comedy, Zobel so effectively creates an atmosphere of sexualisation and exploitation that the film feels far more graphic than it actually is.