Synopsis
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.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Valene KaneAmy Whittaker
- Shazad LatifAbu Bilel Al-Britani
- Christine AdamsVick
- Amir RahimzadehLou
- Morgan WatkinsMatthew
- Therica Wilson-ReadStella
- Eloise ThomasTaylor
- Emma CaterKathy
- Kelley MackConverted Female
- Kate WatsonMakeup Tutorial Instructor
Recommendations
- 100
The Playlist
The relationship between “Melody” and “Bilel” (also an assumed name) shows the slippery nature of performed online identities, the leveraging of personal grievances into political/terrorist action, and how the immense scale of social media can essentially collectivize and weaponize alienation and anger from around the world into real world terror. - 83
The Film Stage
While the gloss of studio thrillers allow enough distance that we can sit back and be entertained by what’s on screen, Profile’s desktop setting makes Amy’s situation all the more immediate, because it feels so authentic. The film is proof that ScreenLife isn’t just a gimmick, but a cinematic tool we ought to be taking seriously. - 80
Screen Daily
The story is told entirely on a computer screen, through skype, social media and editing programs. And despite the restrictions of this device, the film crackles with tension. - 75
IndieWire
Even at its most absurd, the movie is chilled by an ominous and ever-present feeling that the world has become smaller than we ever thought possible, and that real nightmares are waiting for us on the other side of every window. - 75
TheWrap
As much as Bekmambetov is able to maintain a sense of impending doom, the revelations are predictable, even if the means through which we learn them are clever. - 70
Variety
Bekmambetov’s cumulatively hysterical film begins as a study of terror before lurching into something closer to horror. - 60
The Guardian
Profile is a pretty conventional thriller with pretty conventional stereotypes. - 50
The A.V. Club
No matter where he goes, even when he’s working in a subgenre he helped build, Bekmambetov loses himself in the pixels.
