"Compliance" is a movie that requires RAMPANT stupidity and naivete. I don't think it is calculable the amount of pure unadulterated stupidity that is required for the events of this movie to occur. What's sad is that I believe that such events could occur. I do believe that you could easily get four or five morons to go along with such a patently illegal and perverse plot.
If you haven't watched it, it's about a twisted pervert who poses as a police officer over the phone and accuses an employee (Dreama Walker) of stealing money. In most places a stunt like this could last about thirty seconds, but in this anonymous rinky-dink town in Ohio it went on for hours. All it took was a naive restaurant manager (Ann Dowd) and about four equally idiotic others to get a full grown woman to strip and put herself through utter humiliation for some money that was allegedly stolen.
"Compliance" tells a sad tale of the human willingness to obey authority to any extent. And it portrays several individuals who, if a gene pool needs to be erased from existence, theirs certainly does--starting with the store manager, Sandra (Ann Dowd).
A very authoritative sounding man pretended to be a cop investigating a theft at a ChickWich (a cheaper Chick Fil-A type restaurant). He made all of his accusations over the phone while a very compliant manager aided him in his investigation. The "investigation" should've been over the moment he asked Sandra to check Becky's (Dreama Walker) stuff, but it wasn't. When the investigation got to the point of a strip search that Sandra and her shift supervisor, Marti (Ashlie Atkinson), both sat in on, there were no more limits to how far these imbeciles would go to comply with authority.
I've rated this movie highly because it stirred and disturbed me deeply. I have no problem saying that I was triggered by this movie. I hated every aspect of what was going on, yet I was impressed how this movie could rouse me to such heights of anger without being propagandistic or plain trash. I think this movie accomplished what it set out to do, even if it was just to get people angry and call the characters s**t-for-brains. But I do believe the movie had a bigger aim, which was to show how easily people will comply with the most absurd demands of authority, and I, for one, believe it.
