Ann Dowd and Dreama Walker (Magnolia Pictures)

Sandra (Ann Dowd) is the middle-aged manager of a ChickWich franchise. Her territory is a grey part of Ohio recovering from winter. The extent of her domain — the ChickWich parking lot — is lined with snow piles blackened with exhaust, edging lined parking spaces and driveways that form abstract patterns in asphalt. This commercial landscape is the America of Compliance, where things are put into their places and everything is just so.

When we meet Sandra she’s being chewed out by a supply man appalled that someone left a freezer door open, spoiling $15 grand of food. Sandra swallows her pride and firmly, but not overbearingly, instructs her workers at the beginning of a shift. Not only do they have to deal with an understocked freezer (low on bacon!), a company honcho is scheduled to pay a visit disguised as a customer. Stay on top of your game, she tells her staff, and in idle moments, clean clean clean.

The shift seems to go as normal, and if you edit out the angry delivery man it could almost be a training video. Shots of cashiers, customers, and deep fryers look perfectly ordinary. But the film’s stressful introduction builds tension against this mundane backdrop. Sandra gets a call from a man (Pat Healy) identifying himself as the police. A customer claims that a blonde cashier (Dreama Walker) stole money out of her purse and there’s surveillance footage to prove it. An already stressed out Sandra follows the policeman’s orders, which begin with a search of Becky, the alleged thief.

Compliance effectively sets up its psychological thrills, all the more chilling because it’s in the kind of fast food restaurant of everyday American life. But as the caller places more and more demands on Sandra and Becky, members of the audience at a preview screening began to laugh, questioning the actions of the movie’s characters who certainly don’t behave the way you or I would. We question authority, we know our rights. But how would we really behave in this situation?

Why do we obey authority? Psychologist Stanley Milgram was struck by the example of Nazi Germany, and conducted a series of experiments at Yale in the 1960s. Participants in Milgram’s obedience experiments (you can see a film of the process here) were told that the experiment was about how people learn. Subjects were put in front of a control board. “Teachers” ordered subjects to turn a knob to deliver an electric shock to a “learner” who gave a wrong answer. (In reality, of course, the “learners” were actor in cahoots with Milgram) The shock controls were clearly marked as to dangerous and lethal levels, and if a participant declined to continue with the experiment, the “teacher” would give the simple instructions: “please continue.” In studies made across classes and cultures, nearly 66% of subjects administered what they thought was a lethal electric shock.

Director Craig Zobel was researching Milgram’s experiments when he came across the news reports on which he based his script. Compliance is fraught with thriller tropes seen through an art-house filter, with plenty of coldly beautiful establishing shots of corporate America. The cast’s lack of star power is a definite advantage, making them seem all the more like ordinary people under unusual stress. Ann Dowd effortlessly conveys the kind of friendly mid-west chat that disguises unease with small talk and self-deception. The psychological horrors of Compliance are prone to at least one horror-movie trope: the attractive young blonde will take off her clothes. And although this is a scene played for unease, it smacks a little bit of exploitation; but it also implicates audiences. Do we want to obey orders or give them? Audiences raised to question authority will refuse to believe they would follow the orders of Milgram’s experiments. But studies show that anxiety undermines reason. Let’s hope we are never anxious enough to find out what orders we might obey. Or what orders we might give.

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Compliance
Written and directed by Craig Zobel.
With Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker, Pat Healy.
Running time 90 minutes
Rated R for language and sexual content/nudity