Title: Compliance
First Non-Festival Release: TBD
Director: Kyle Mangione-Smith
Writer: Kyle Mangione-Smith
Runtime: 105 Minutes
Starring: Megan Wilcox, Lindsey Normington, Charlie Wood
Where to Watch: Check out where to find it here
This film’s review was written after its screening at the Fantastic Film Festival in 2026.
With the growing understanding of how sexual misconduct infects all aspects of life, society’s impending reckoning has yet to fully reverberate. Sure, sometimes high-profile cases result in justice but too often are horrific allegations swept under the rug by those in power at the expense of victims. It doesn’t help that even in the internet age, with the entire internet and social media at our fingertips, technology find ways to subvert accountability.
This is Sam’s (Megan Wilcox) reality as a social worker employed by a tech startup that focuses on short term housing. When one of their clients, Sarah (Lindsey Normington), reports a sexual assault on one of their properties, Sam goes into PR mode. When Sarah doesn’t cooperate, Sam is pressured by her team to close the deal no matter what, even if it doesn’t follow a timeline conducive to healing and support. Her stress is amplified further when she gets trapped in a terrifying conspiracy where she must participate if she wants to live to see the other side of her bad choices.
A messy yet effective found footage horror, Compliance is bold in its clumsily executed vision.
Off the bat, Compliance is a film bound to divide audiences. Its strong condemnation of the surveillance state, big tech, and the attitudes we have towards sexual misconduct fuel its conspiratorial approach to horror. Voyeurism and complicity fuel the narrative but also give way to some incredibly powerful moments. Sam’s initial faith in the company plummets the further along she gets into Sarah’s case. Falling down the rabbit hole, she uncovers more sinister revelations of the company she works for and the cabal of faceless people behind the threats to her safety and peace. But is it deserved?
Sam serves an important function in Compliance. Incredibly frustrating but all too real, Sam represents many good-natured people who abandon their morals for a paycheck. Despite her being in the dark to most company secrets, Sam convinces herself that she is doing good work to help survivors of trauma heal. Wrapped in HR doublespeak and promises of company goodwill, the illusion is muddied the more she engages with her peers and management. Everyone is upset this happened, but Sam is the only one who shows any care for the victim. She may be spineless in most of her actions, but her heart is in the right place. Her successful manipulation allows Compliance to build a case for the necessity of whistleblowers and the need for true accountability.
The more it descends into the conspiracy behind the organization terrorizing Sam, it opens up more intriguing commentary on how technology is used to further abuse. Peering into Sam’s life thanks to exploited vulnerabilities in her tech, every move Sam makes is watched, some by the company she works for and all by the organization controlling her. A terrifying concept, the reality is already here for Americans. Flock cameras track your every move with the goal of imprisoning you, webcams can be hacked by edgelords hoping to get jerk off material, and your data is regularly compromised by the scores of companies buying and selling it on a whim. Compliance gets how overwhelming this is and forces the viewer to sit with that discomfort.
Compliance shows how misinformation can open conversations that can never be closed. Cartoonish depictions of conservative protestors, tech bro CEOs, and Anonymous-esque tech cabals aside, misinformation spreads through the internet with ease. It’s easy to control a narrative, or muddy the waters, if enough care goes into getting as much “truth” out there. Reminiscent of the efforts made to diffuse the factual understanding of Sandy Hook and Law Vegas shootings, Compliance shows how intentional framing can create entire narratives with the goal of shaping public discourse. It’s a terrifying thought that one could fall for such a campaign, but when there is so much information thrown at internet users, it’s hard to deny the impact such coordinated efforts can make. Compliance poses the question: can we be sure of anything that makes waves on the internet, if the technology exists to smudge the truth? In the era of AI, this unsettling reality hits harder.
The themes are bolstered by its slick, stylish approach to found footage horror. Utilizing many creative in-universe cameras, Compliance creates a unique visual language that captures the chaos of its story. Sam is watched from everywhere, making every choice feel heavy and haunting at once. The harsh audio-visual montage at the end represents the sensory nightmare that the internet has become, one where bright colors, fast shapes, and quotable phrases almost physically attack the viewer with their intensity. Put together, Compliance genuinely feels like an evil film one discovers on the dark web, depicting something plausibly real while maintaining a sense of dread that powers the horrible, sinking feeling one has watching it.
Despite the intentionality, Compliance suffers from structural issues that mitigates its impact. While the mystery behind it is compelling, the story struggles to convincingly take Sam on her journey. Her recruitment process feels disjointed despite being necessary to get from point A to B and its final fifteen minutes gets lost within itself. It doesn’t help that Sam Wilcox’s performance is uneven at best throughout Compliance. This can be attributed to character work that paints her as hopelessly inept rather than intentionally a bad person, but that same nuance isn’t afforded to any of the antagonists, both corporate and faceless.
Compliance is a mixed bag with more good than bad. Its messy takedown of the institutional politics that shape our society and the weaponization of algorithms to transform narratives is compelling enough. Good intentions cannot excuse the rougher narrative issues. Found footage horror continues to excel in innovating the genre and challenging works like Compliance show where the medium can continue to expand while still delivering entertaining and horrific films.
Overall Score? 6/10
