Fantastic Fest 2026: COMPLIANCE (2026)
Fuzzy images coming into view, the unmistakable presence of tracking bands, or markers in the corners indicating we’re watching something that was not meant for us -- these are just a few of the hallmarks of found footage horror. It’s a beloved subgenre that has taken many angles, mostly paranormal, but in COMPLIANCE, the feature film debut of director Kyle Mangione-Smith, he turns the elements of classic found-footage horror into the building blocks of a conspiracy cyber thriller that is unapologetic about its brash approach, and unrelenting in its depiction of every awful thing our modern times have wrought.
COMPLIANCE follows the story of Sam Cornell (Megan Wilcox), a social-worker-turned-fixer at a tech startup that specializes in vacation rentals. When Sam is called in to do damage control with a sexual assault victim who was attacked at one of the startup’s rentals, she is thrust into a shadowy world that takes her through dark-web funded alleys and eventually puts her on the front lines of a tragedy that looks so much like what has become commonplace in our current hellscape. Using the language of both found footage horror and screenlife films (the audience follows Sam’s digital footsteps throughout the film, seeing her use her laptop and her phone as she digs deeper into the darkness) to create an atmosphere that feels hostile and unstable -- a perfect encapsulation of modern anxieties.
The film bounces around from various cameras -- phones, laptops, clandestine devices in the cracks of Sam’s home -- to the screens we spend our lives on. It feels true to life, never endangering the tone or pacing of the film, but adding to it. After the initial talk Sam has with the victim goes sour, and her boss is unrelentingly vile about her performance, she is let go. We watch Sam’s evening unfold across the hidden cameras in her home and the screens she uses to navigate the world around her and learn more about the deep web of secrecy she’s about to get lost in forever. Indeed, the way the movie transitions from different modes of observance feels second nature to anyone who lives in our world of neverending inputs. The audience gets so lulled into this world that when something disrupts it, such as a strange figure appearing in the frame of one of the cameras in Sam’s home, or the revelation of a devastating new piece of information delivered via text, it feels like a rupture that cannot be contained, like seeing unexpected violence or porn pop up on your social media feed of choice unexpectedly.
Much of the reason why COMPLIANCE feels so compelling, even when the images on screen are so unbearable to watch, is because there is a sense of the uncanny that floats throughout the film. Mangione-Smith has created a world that feels almost identical to ours: websites are littered with the clutter of ads that assault you from the screen: “A Poob+ Original!,” “You will HAVE to fuck UGLY GRANNYS,” the visual overload is relentless and true-to-life. When the worst parts of humanity unfold before us in real time, as part of a neverending barrage of horror, it becomes clear that humanity was never meant to process so much all at once. It’s a similar sensation to the feeling that arises when one sees clips from the latest mass shooting caught on bodycams and then scrolls up to find a recipe for cookies right after -- a cognitive dissonance no one has figured out how to navigate well. When we see Sam moving through the offices of her former employer, now as a pawn in a bigger game, we expect some subterfuge and espionage, but then things escalate and the screen splits to show us other things happening: files being uploaded, tweets being posted, someone jumping out of a building. We switch to other perspectives being filmed at the same time from other cameras in the building, on people, and then ultimately, on a gunman that carries out a mass shooting on livestream.
To say that COMPLIANCE is not for the faint of heart feels dismissive, and yet, it can be hard to watch the events happening on screen at any given time: there is simulated rape, home invasions, and the aforementioned mass shooting. We are even treated to the aftermath of the mass shooting, the edgelord conspiracy podcasts questioning the whole event, the unearthed video manifesto of the shooter, and even what happens to Sam. It’s a sometimes punishing, but overall compelling feel-bad time at the movies: like falling into the deepest, darkest Wikipedia rabbit-hole at three in the morning. If anything makes it worth watching, it’s the way the film has taken the worst parts of our world and turned them towards us, recreating the bleak, nearly unbearable feeling that comes with being bombarded by so much ugliness at once. Sam is a powerful stand-in for the audience: a person thrust into a world raining down so much information and Wilcox performs it beautifully. Sam feels relatable and deeply tragic -- someone who was trying to improve their life within the confines we all operate in, but then has to sell out to survive anyway. A character that could feel distant instead occupies the same space as a friend that we want to make it out of their awful circumstances somehow -- even though we know the odds are against them.
COMPLIANCE has rendered our world in vividly grotesque detail and plays out like a conspiracy thriller for our (terminally online) times. If you have the stomach to go down its twisted pathways and gutting revelations, you might just find a new, deeply upsetting entry to the found footage canon.
