Focus Features
A fairly new way of telling visual stories is with a technology platform called ‘Screenlife’, which has been used for such horror oriented movies as Searching and Unfriended. We see literally everything on the screen (usually an Apple device so FaceTime can be used) for the entire movie (or most of the movie). It can be a soulless gimmick or a way to show the newer ways we use technology to communicate differently than in decades past. Some of these movies struggle to justify the platform, but other times it really does make sense.
Profile comes from director Timur Bekmambetov, written by him and co-writers Britt Poulton and Olga Kharina, based upon the 2015 non-fiction book In The Skin of a Jihadist by Anna Erelle. Naturally some things in the movie are dramatized or streamlined, but that’s to be expected.
Valene Kale stars as journalist Amy Whittaker, someone we see in glimpses of texts and emails, who is actually struggling for a decent salary and wants to find the big story to take her there. Her brand new idea is to catfish on Facebook as a new convert to Islam and try to get the attention of a recruiter from ISIS.
Her editor Vick (Christine Adams) is on board with the idea, and all of what we see is the actions of Christine on her laptop as she does research (some real websites and articles, some not), plans her catfish account, and talks to her friends and boyfriend Matt (Morgan Watkins). At the start her relationship with Matt isn’t particularly the strongest, with concerns about salary disparity and the capability to buy a new place, so there’s something to set up confusion later.
Amy also gets the help of an IT dude to help her set up screen recording and other tricks to hide her true identity. Under the guise of ‘Melody Nelson’, she is soon contacted by a man calling himself Bilel (Shazad Latif), and the two begin a tentative series of Skype conversations. For a long while, we only know Amy’s side, pretending a conversion and feigning an interest in Bilel’s struggle, while the terrorist recruiter charms her despite her best efforts at avoiding any attachment.
But it can be difficult to determine fact from fiction and true connection from the fakeness of a digital persona, which presents a legitimately useful reason to have the screen-only platform for the movie. At times as we see Amy scramble to quickly Google something or clear a search history or even balance multiple text conversations at once, it can grow quite tense even as we only hear one set of dialogue at a time.
As Amy keeps pushing towards her idea of the perfect story, the lines grow blurrier and the feelings more complicated, even if we can never be quite sure if Bilel is lying or telling the truth. Considering the nature of the film structure, it does give a really good chance to show off the acting of the two leads, showing Amy’s face often during her Melody conversations and switching between that and her normal life.
Shazad Latif (who was in Star Trek: Discovery) is good at playing the charismatic recruiter, but without ever simply playing a fool. It’s a movie that can be at times tense and exciting, and it’s paced pretty well so you never get bored. Despite it being based on a true story, you really don’t know exactly where it’s going to go until the very end.
Due to the digital nature of the story, the ‘screen’ format actually works here, but I do worry that others will simply try to copy it (like with Searching) without really understanding why it works here. Still, this is a pretty engaging, clever example of the format and it’s a standout among the genre.
Profile has a run time of 1 hour 45 minutes and is rated R for language throughout and some disturbing images.
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