Film Review – Profile

Desktop thrillers, or “livescreen” movies, are nothing new, recently finding box office success with 2018’s “Searching” (a sequel is due out next year). This wave of screensharing entertainment is primarily limited to thrillers, which help to supercharge the mundane movements and clicks normally associated with computer management. For “Profile,” director Timur Bekmambetov (who co-produced “Searching”) tries to reach beyond escapism and dramatize terrorist horrors, taking inspiration from Anna Erelle’s 2015 book, “In the Skin of a Jihadist: Inside Islamic State’s Recruitment Networks,” which detailed one journalist’s dark exploration of online manipulation. “Profile” commences as a compelling procedural, highlighting the methods used to create a story using social media connections and video conference communication. Maintaining a colder distance to the topic doesn’t appeal to Bekmambetov for very long, soon trying to bend verisimilitude to inspire suspense cinema, turning a real-world nightmare into a cartoon. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com