The film follows dual stories of investigative journalists at the Romanian newspaper Gazeta Sporturilor uncovering public healthcare corruption and maladministration, and the government's response to the crisis at the Ministry of Health.

Journalists from Gazeta Sporturilor (The Sports Gazette) begin investigating the mismanagement of healthcare by public hospitals after sources inform them that the disinfectants used are diluted.

Testing confirms this, and the journalists subsequently publish a hard-hitting story about the supplier, Hexi Pharma, and how it falsified documentation for the supplied disinfectants.

Their source, a frustrated doctor, explains that patient deaths resulting from diluted disinfectants or inadequate blood transfusion services continue unabated, even after the Social Democratic governmental ousting in late 2015.

Vlad Voiculescu, the new Minister of Health, meets with the doctor, and she details how hospital management avoided the problems and did nothing while patients were dying.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 99% of 134 critics' reviews of the film are positive, with an average rating of 9/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "Collective presents a darkly effective overview of the cycle of political corruption and public cynicism that takes hold when government abrogates its responsibility to the people.

"[7] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 95 out of 100 based on reviews from 24 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

[8] Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Justin Chang called the film "a gripping, despairing exposé of institutional injustice".

[9] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that the film "sketches out an honest, affecting, somewhat old-fashioned utopian example of what it takes to make the world better, or at least a little less awful.