I don't think I've ever felt so uncomfortable watching a film before. I don't think I've ever seen so many people leave a screening before. I certainly haven't heard an audience member very vocally encouraging people to leave the cinema before. It's safe to say that Compliance is a difficult and controversial watch.
Normally people walk out because a film isn't very good or perhaps the violence is particularly shocking but neither of these can be given as reasons in this instance, it is the subject matter.
Compliance is based on true events about a prank caller who, posing as a police man, persuades the manager of a fast food outlet that one of his young female staff has stolen from a customer. He convinces the manager to interrogate the girl in his absence. This isn't about violence, it's about sexual exploitation a gullibility on a massive scale.
If you didn't know that it was based on true events you simply wouldn't believe it. Never have I wanted to yell at the screen more, never have I felt so psychologically squeamish.
Some have criticised the film saying it is to exploitative, titillating and tantamount to pornography. The filmmakers certainly can't be accused of glamourising sexual exploitation. The film has such a naturalistic feel you could imagine, they've put cameras on the wall of any down-at-heel fast food joint in North America.
Compliance, like the events it is based on, puts some of the very worse and baffling human behaviour under the microscope - the stuff of psychologists or sociologists research papers. It isn't worrying that this film was made, it is worrying that supposedly right-minded human beings allowed such things to happen.
Compliance stays with you - afterwards I had to purge it from my mind with a nice, pleasant, fluffy DVD. I can't fault it for the emotions it stirs but it won't be one I'll rush back to see indeed I could never stomach seeing it again.
Such is its affect that I'm finding it hard to rate. For something that produced such a strong emotional response it should get a high rating but such is the subject matter that I'm finding it hard to detach moral judgement; to give it a good score makes me feel like I'm somehow complicit. Which is ridiculous.
I'm going to give it 80% for producing the effect it did and for being such a talking point but I certainly didn't enjoy it. On IMDb it has 66% with a Metacritic score of 68% while on Rotten Tomatoes it has 89% but no reader rating yet.
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