A few years ago, I checked out this movie starring John Cho called Searching, which is part of a growing genre called "screenlife" — films that take place entirely on a computer screen. The whole thing was wild and I really enjoyed watching the mystery unfold like I was some kind of armchair detective!
Well, now, there's a new screenlife film coming out called Profile by filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov — who, btw, produced Searching and also Unfriended, another popular screenlife film. And let's just say Profile sucked me in and had me shouting right up until the very end.
So, the premise of the movie follows a British journalist named Amy Whittaker who goes undercover to investigate the recruitment of young women by terrorist organizations via social media.
The story gets going pretty quickly. We learn about Amy and her personal life — she's wishy washy with her boyfriend, overdue on her rent, and desperately pitching ideas to her editorial boss, Vick. Basically, Amy's stressed from everything in her life (and aren't we all!).
After researching stories about the recruitment of other young women in the past, Amy eventually pitches Vick her grand idea: She's going to catfish a terrorist recruiter. Vick loves it and signs off.
Amy creates a fake Facebook account (where she calls herself Melody Nelson and says she's a recent convert to Islam) and begins to follow a bunch of terrorist accounts and like a ton of propaganda posts.
It doesn't take long for her to get some like-minded followers, and she eventually connects with a man named Bilel who is handsome, charming, and DEFINITELY a recruiter for ISIS.
Amy is super cautious at first with Bilel, and there are some intense moments where she's bouncing between chat message windows on her computer screen with Vick, an IT guy who's trying to help Amy record everything, and Bilel back-to-back. And if you think this sounds super stressful, you're RIGHT!
Anyway, Amy (as Melody) and Bilel begin to video chat pretty regularly. And, in true Amy fashion, she continues to go back and forth between video chats with Bilel, text messages with Vick and her sister, and incoming calls from her boyfriend simultaneously. Things get pretty chaotic at times, but it all makes for good drama, ya know?
Bilel is super charismatic and they weirdly (or maybe NOT weirdly) begin to connect on a lot of different levels. Of course, Bilel is also pretty aggressive about trying to get "Melody" to come to Syria to marry him, to which I constantly was like, "girl, no."
But given how stressed and generally unhappy Amy is about her REAL life, she actually slowly warms up to the idea of flying to Syria to at least meet Bilel (UGH, I know)...
...and, honestly, she starts to develop feelings for him, too, because D-R-A-M-A.
I'm not going to tell you exactly how the end of the movie plays out (because...spoilers). BUT, I will say that the last 15 minutes get even more intense. And let's just say I went from saying "I knew it" to my stomach actually dropping.
So, if you're a fan of screenlife movies or just, like, really good, intense thrillers, then you're probably going to be into this movie.
Intensity rating: 8/10
Stress rating: 9/10
"Amy making bad decisions that made me yell at the TV" rating: 10/10
Profile opens in theaters on May 14 (sorry, no streaming plans as of yet), and you can see the official trailer here:
