As another insidious prankster said in a 2008 crime thriller, "Let's wind the clocks back a year." Around this time we were in a relatively similar position of the year, be it with more reasons for hope than this year has given us. I'm rather confident that Hope Springs is no The Help, and Dredd 3D is likely no Drive, but 2012 has found its equivalent to a film that released around this period of last year. Steven Soderbergh's Contagion was, as usual for the director, a tight mainstream propelled thriller with ace atmospherics and a stylistic coda to keep to. More than anything, however, it was a case study in a subject that we suddenly could not stop thinking about.
Where Soderbergh's film had me squirming all over in realization of the abundance of germs shortly afterwards, Compliance raises a not quite so immediate post-screening reaction. The impact of the film isn't so much one that can be felt at face value, and the effect of it is not what it achieves onscreen, but what it has the audience poring over in retrospect.
