Compliance

A riveting, horrifying film, shot through with beautifully observed moments of unwelcome truth.

Compliance is one of the toughest sits of the movie year 2012. But it's an uncompromising and, in its way, honorable drama built upon a prank call that goes on and on, getting worse and worse for the people on the other end of the line.

The point of Compliance, which caused walkouts and shouting matches when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, is how we are programmed to do things that go against our natural instincts as long as we believe we have the law on our side.

There's the adage that life is nasty, brutish and short. It's even worse when you're half-naked and locked in a supply room with your boss.

This is one insistent film, more evocative of human behavior than movies that take fewer risks ever could be.

Like a John Hughes movie hijacked by Roman Polanski, this troubling indie effort lays bare the sadomasochism of the American workplace.

Zobel does a great job of just making you uncomfortable, making you want to just yell at the screen and tell the characters to just stop.

Dark, disturbing, confrontational stuff. Also a damn good film.

Compliance is diminutively sufficient and blandly adequate with no additional layers that elevate its small independent nature. It feels rather one note riding on the promise of a distinctive tale that never totally comes to fulfillment.

A frightening look at the power of authority and the human desire to avoid conflict.

It never loses sight of its goal to persuade us to be more aware, more questioning of our leaders and institutions, from politicians to priests to, in this case, the police.

The only film of 2012 that had me actively booing its villain - a mundane monster who doesn't need to touch his victims to scar them for life.