Compulsion: A Crime Drama That's All Smoulder, But No Spark
By Thom Ernst
Rating: C
Director/writer Neil Marshall, the proud owner of an IMDb page boasting cult gems like Dog Soldiers and The Descent, seems to be wandering into the wilderness of straight-to-stream titles.
His latest, Compulsion, feels less like a fresh outing and more like The Descent III (yes, there’s already a Part II)—not as a continuation of the franchise, but as a chronicle of Marshall’s downward slide.
The disappointment isn’t just that the film shares a title with Richard Fleischer’s taut true-crime drama Compulsion (1959), a film inspired by the Leopold and Loeb murder case,and echoed in Hitchcock’s Rope.
Anna-Maria Sieklucka and Charlotte Kirk in Compulsion
Marshall’s film has nothing to do with either. And I wouldn’t have brought it up except to point out how easily Marshall could have dodged the comparison altogether. Instead, what he delivers edges closer to the sultry thrillers of the 1990s: Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Bound. Except…he doesn’t quite make it there either.
The stunning, unblemished vistas of Malta, beautifully captured by cinematographer Ali Asad, are squandered in a film that feels like a glossy postcard without the stamp it needs to get to its destination. Marshall aims for a stratosphere of heart-pounding erotic tension, and he’s got the cast to pull it off: Charlotte Kirk (who also co-wrote), Anna-Maria Sieklucka, and Zach McGowan.
But the performances, whether dictated by Marshall or chosen by the actors, land with the strained intensity of a teenager practicing “sexy” in the mirror. Everyone smolders, broods, and coldly dismisses advances, confusing intensity with allure.
Kirk, as Diana, is the guiltiest: she wants us to see a woman radiating danger and desire, but what comes across is someone pretending to be “mysterious.” She mistakes brooding for beguiling, and the result is less femme fatale than a self-conscious teenager posing as sultry at the school dance.
Sieklucka fares better, but then again, she’s had the practice, having survived all three entries of the erotically charged 365 Days franchise (a series with an impressively low 2.5 IMDb average). Here she plays Evie, the sexually adventurous companion to the equally adventurous Reese (McGowan). Their chemistry? Volatile at best, predatory at worst.
Diana’s arrival flips the couple from battling lovers into manipulative schemers. They learn of Diana’s stepfather’s absurd wealth and dubious influence—though the exact details of their scheme remain as confounding as their fluctuating accents.
Meanwhile, a killer in full, body-clinching latex prowls Malta (somehow without raising anyone’s attention), slicing through local men like a dominatrix version of Jason Voorhees, only shapelier.
Enter Detective Claudia (Giulia Gorietti) and Inspector Crawford (Harvey Dean), paired in the time-honoured tradition of cinematic “unlikely partners,” set up to bicker their way toward a begrudging respect. But whatever animosity they might have seems to get resolved off-camera, somewhere between scenes, when not even the director is looking.
Suspicion drifts inevitably toward Diana, though that path is paved with diversions: romantic texts to a faraway partner, unwanted advances from a persistent Uber driver, conflicted temptations, and a seething resentment toward an unseen benefactor.
The dialogue does nothing to help sort out the chaos. Technically it’s all in English, but it lands with the stilted oddness of an outdated dub track. Not dubbed, mind you, it just sounds dubbed. As though Marshall sourced his sound department wholesale from Temu. Dialogue drifts out of characters’ mouths as if the words don’t belong there; actors over-enunciate yet still manage to be, at times, unintelligible. It’s a peculiar effect, like watching a film translated from its original language and then dubbed back into its original language.
Compulsion crawls toward a finale that addresses all questions with predominantly “who cares?” answers. Perhaps if Marshall had gotten there sooner, he might have salvaged a passable thriller. Instead, what we’re left with is a Maltese giallo knock-off. Whatever interesting elements surface come too late and are deeply problematic. By the time the narrative decides where it’s going, the audience has already decided not to care. Still, I gotta’ admit, Malta sure looks lovely this time of year.
Compulsion is directed by Neil Marshall and stars Charlotte Kirk, Anna-Maria Sieklucka, Zach McGowan, Giulia Gorietti and Harvey Dean. Compulsion is available in selective theatres, digital and on-demand beginning Sept. 19, 2025.