Review of Compliance (2012) by Ricardocardenas — 26 Oct 2012

The biggest problem I had with this film was that it felt like a short film being turned into a feature without enough material, and the film runs on empty long before the credits roll. This is like sitting through a student film that keeps running on and on and on and on.

In spite of solid performances, the characters don't feel like real people but rather like creations of a writer with an agenda as his biggest concern: Every character in this movie is expendable to the situation of a prank call gone to the point of sexual assault. The intelligence of the characters was something that bothered me, but what bothered me even more was the notion of a writer not endowing his/her characters with any common sense whatsoever. As a consequence every scene felt like a false note. I am at a loss why some critics have called it tense. Tension would have been good, but I guess that would have required for the writer to care about his/her characters. Finally, I don't think that a movie being based on actual events excuses it from having a bad script. And the script for Compliance is bad. Everything in the movie crumbles because of it.