By George & Josh Bate
In the years since The Blair Witch Project brought found footage horror into the mainstream, just about every iteration of mockumentary, first-person perspective, handheld camera, and cinéma vérité have been depicted in one way or another in film. But writer/director Kyle Mangione-Smith proves found footage naysayers wrong with Compliance, a troubling new thriller deeply rooted in topics disturbing in their relevance.
Making its world premiere at this year’s Fantastic Fest, Compliance follows Sam (Megan Wilcox), a social worker employed as a public relations representative for UVisit, a tech startup akin to Airbnb. When a woman named Sarah (Lindsay Normington) is raped in a UVisit accomodation, Sam is brought in to have Sarah sign an NDA preventing her from speaking out about the company, although she tries to convince herself that she is doing altruistic work by tending to the well-being of sexual assault survivors. What Sam doesn’t realize is that, in addition to pressure from her superior (Charlie Wood) to silence Sarah, she has stumbled into a world of surveillance and conspiracy far more expansive than she could have possibly imagined.
Compliance capitalizes on the inherent invasiveness of the found footage format to an extent arguably no film to date has done before. While the beginning of the film primarily relies on Unfriended-esque screencast, public surveillance footage, and Sam’s company camera to chronicle her work for UVisit, Mangione-Smith increasingly (and unsettlingly) expands the breadth of the found footage he uses. Hidden camera footage from within Sam’s home, for instance, begins to suggest that there is something more far-reaching and complex at play than a woman falling victim to sexual assault.
Mangione-Smith withholds revealing what forces are behind the hidden cameras for the first half, in turn imbuing his film with a sense of intrigue and mystery. The build-up to the eventual reveal is where Compliance most overtly embraces the horror genre, with a handful of genuinely scary moments and disconcerting imagery ensuring that the film, at least in parts, will play well to the horror crowd.
Compliance becomes markedly more unnerving upon a game-changing reveal midway through the film. While touching on the overreach of tech companies and the immorality of corporate culture in its first portion, Mangione-Smith’s film evolves into an unflinching and even brutal examination of the illusive forces at play that dictate all of our lives without us knowing. The film quickly becomes a commentary on matters far grander than surveillance as Mangione-Smith approaches the state of the world from a deep-seated (and well-founded) place of anger.
While all of this could be read as Mangione-Smith corroborating the perspectives of radical online conspiracy theorists about manufactured crises, information control, secret meetings, and shadowy cabals, Compliance instead leans into a more generalist and scathing condemnation of how powerful people from behind the scenes pull the strings and have undue influence on the world, in turn depriving everyday people of their autonomy.
In its third act, Compliance continues to explore these issues but from the lens of a nail-biting thriller. The entire final stretch of the film is the kind of climax that will have you holding your breath and eagerly awaiting what’s going to happen next. Mangione-Smith exhibits a masterful handling of maximizing tension throughout the film, but more specifically in a third act that is potentially more intense than anything you’ll watch this year.
With a runtime of nearly two hours, however, Compliance overstays its welcome. After such a nerve-racking climax, Mangione-Smith draws out all the aftermath and is a bit too heavy-handed with his story’s resolution. A touch more subtly and restraint would have allowed the final act’s suspense to reverberate longer and the commentary to land more lastingly.
But Mangione-Smith doesn’t let his audience off easy. Before the final credits roll, the film features an aggressive, prolonged assault on the senses that makes for viscerally uncomfortable viewing. If it wasn’t abundantly clear already, these final moments define Compliance as a feel-bad movie, a far cry from the kind of crowd-pleaser many people go to the movies to behold, yet Mangione-Smith’s excruciating conclusion is profoundly effective in provoking the discomfort and tension he intends. He seemingly doesn’t want his audience to walk away with hope that things will get better or guidance as to what we can do about the dismal state of the world; his film holds an uncomfortably vivid mirror up to society and, in this sense, creates an unconventional horror movie far scarier than most.
VERDICT: 7.5/10
Making its world premiere at this year’s Fantastic Fest, Compliance is a troubling new thriller deeply rooted in topics disturbing in their relevance. Writer/director Kyle Mangione-Smith’s film capitalizes on the inherent invasiveness of the found footage format, increasingly and unsettlingly expanding the breadth of the found footage it uses while imbuing the film with a sense of intrigue and mystery. Upon a game-changing reveal midway through the film, Compliance evolves into an unflinching and even brutal examination of the illusive forces at play that dictate all of our lives without us knowing, becoming a scathing condemnation of how powerful people from behind the scenes pull the strings and have undue influence on the world. Its nail-biting third act maximizes tension, with a climax that is potentially more intense than anything you’ll watch this year, although the film overstays its welcome and is a bit too heavy-handed with its story’s resolution. Ultimately, Compliance is a feel-bad movie and an unconventional horror movie far scarier than most, holding an uncomfortably vivid mirror up to society that reflects the disturbing realities of the world, rather than offer hope or solutions.