Profile (2018)
Directed by Timur Bekmambetov
Looking to investigate recruitment techniques of ISIS to lure women into Syria, a journalist creates a Facebook profile of a Muslim convert. When an ISIS recruiter contacts her online character, she experiences the process first hand.
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What critics compared Profile to
When you watch any screenlife movie (Unfriended, Searching, Missing, Unfriended: Dark Web, Profile), there’s a high percentage chance that Bekmambetov was involved…
This concerns titles like Unfriended and Profile transpiring entirely on a computer screen.
Bekmambetov has been involved with some great films in this genre, such as Searching, Profile, and Missing, but also some turds like War of the Worlds.
Director Timur Bekmambetov juggles the various images (much like his last computer thriller PROFILE)…
Sadly, Bekmambetov (Profile) relies heavily on coincidence…
Bekmambetov tried his hand at it with the 2018 ISIS recruitment thriller Profile to minor success…
Cowriter (with Britt Poulton and Olga Kharina)/director Timur Bekmambetov ("Night Watch," 2016's "Ben-Hur"), who kicked off the Russian trend of hyperactive cinema now seen in the films of Kirill Sokolov (“Why Don’t You Just Die!”) and Ilya Naishuller (“Hardcore Henry,” “Nobody”), would seem an odd choice to adapt the 2015 nonfiction bestseller " In The Skin of a Jihadist," but we can see his style all over the computer screen film.
That’s a terrifyingly immediate sensation, and one that points to a new kind of interactive storytelling in which a guy like Bekmambetov might be able to physically meld with audiences in a way that the worst of his previous work (“Wanted,” “Hardcore Henry”) has always wished that it could.
Bekmambetov – who had recently taken to producing experimental genre films like Hardcore Henry and Unfriended – was trying his own hand at directing such a feature, bringing together elements of computer screen cinematography with contemporary issues of politics and social media.
Something I’ve always appreciated about Bekmambetov’s films—whether it’s the ones that he’s producing or directing—is how he forward-thinking he is when it comes to utilizing technology in the world of film (one of my favorite examples is Hardcore Henry ), and with Profile , he proves that there’s plenty of drama to be found online as he manages to crank up the tension throughout this engrossing and harrowing terrorism thriller.
It’s 2014 and freelance journalist Amy (Valene Kale, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ) is working on a huge story on ISIS recruiting.
Amy Whittaker (Valene Kane; Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ) is a freelance journalist living in London.