Director Craig Zobel talks about screening ‘Compliance’ abroad

Just before the movie “Compliance” screened in Manaus, Brazil, during the Amazonas Film Festival, director Craig Zobel was more than a little nervous about how the flick would be received. After all, it was arguably the most controversial movie at Sundance earlier this year.

“At that first Sundance screening, a woman told me that it was a horrible film and I was a horrible person,” Zobel recalled to me while standing just outside the Teatro Amazonas — Manaus’s magnificent 100-year-old opera house and the primary venue for the fest. Many critics (including this one) lauded the film as being a chilling cinematic psych experiment; others decried it as exploitation. Either way, it’s not a feel-good movie.

The Amazonas Film Festival: Good Movies, Good Times in the Jungle

“Who would have thought that making a movie about a fast-food joint in Ohio would get me here?”

That’s what Craig Zobel, director of the indie hit “Compliance,” asked me while we were standing waist-deep in a stream in the Amazon rain forest.

This all started a month ago, when I got one of the most random emails of my life. I was selected as one of four journalists to cover, all expenses paid, the Amazonas Film Festival in Manaus, Brazil. My first thought was that the email was spam. My second thought was that this was some sort of scheme to separate me from my kidneys. But no, it was legit. I was invited. How could I turn this down?

Indie Roundup: ‘Compliance’

The new movie “Compliance” is an intensely visceral cinematic psych experiment that will leave you clutching your head in disbelief or shouting at the characters on the screen.

Based on a true story, the movie opens at a drab ChickWich fast-food franchise in suburban Ohio, where we see harried middle-aged manager Sandra (Ann Dowd) getting berated by a corporate suit. It’s Friday, the busiest day of the week, and one of her underlings left the freezer door open the night before, spoiling $15,000 worth of bacon. Then, still smarting from that, she gets mocked behind her back by her pretty 19-year-old employee Becky (Dreama Walker).