Profile (2021)

 Score: 2 / 5

Computer thrillers aren't for everyone, and yet the sub-sub-genre category keeps getting new entries. It makes sense that, in the age of digital connection, these movies would naturally grow out of the found footage tradition. And while we might have expected more of these during the recent pandemic (will we get more in the next half-year?), we were thankfully saved from the exacerbated horror of staring at Skype windows projected on large screens. And now we get Timur Bekmambetov's latest, a movie several years too late to be either timely or consequential, feeling like a half-baked idea turned into a half-baked movie. Its doughy makeup and comparative lack of thrills belie some really interesting and insightful ideas, and the final product left me feeling both unsatisfied and bloated.

An investigative journalist in London named Amy (Valerie Kane) creates a fake profile to attract ISIS recruiters. Her job is on the line -- one wonders exactly how she is supporting herself in her flat, with a dog, as her boss facetimes her at all hours -- and her relationship with Matt is equally rocky. Her boss and boyfriend seem to make demands on her she's not ready to fulfill, and for most of the movie the virtual temptations offered by her extremist liaison make sense to the viewer. He offers her money and stability, the promise of hot sex and a life of both passion and leisure, and of course the kind of fulfillment an awkward outsider like her craves. Well, at least, the version of her she's projecting through her profile. (Get it? Because that's the title of the movie!)

But her recruiter, Bilel (a seductive Shazad Latif), makes his own demands. In their earliest chats, he ensures she always wears a head scarf. He uses cats and kittens to lure Amy in, while decrying dogs as dirty and morally corrupt animals. He pressures her constantly to come to Syria with him and marry him, even to the extent of performing a marriage ceremony via Skype. His charm leaves little to the imagination, and over the course of their roughly month-long Skyping romance, we see Amy fall a little too quickly in love with him. She's not the hard-boiled, world-weary investigator we're used to seeing, which might be why she hasn't yet been hired as a full-time writer. Granted, he's also groomed and styled to be more alluring to Western eyes; perhaps the terrorist recruiters are in real life, but it's hard not to suspect the film of propagating stereotypes of brown people in the exotic Middle East.

She's uncannily incompetent, slipping up in just about every way we can see. It's a dangerous gambit for the filmmakers, placing the weight of the film on an unlikable and often stupid protagonist. She happily shares her screen with the invasive recruiter-slash-paramour. She repeats the truth about her actual real-life location. She shares names of people in her circle. When she gets flustered or shocked and doesn't know what to say, she simply ends the Skype call. "We got disconnected," she says, as if the past year hasn't taught us all not to believe that vague excuse. And yet, that Bilel still manages to hook her (and yes, she is emotionally insane enough to actually fall in love with a violent stranger online) says a lot about, well, everyone in this movie.

Despite the horrific representations of humans in the film, Bekmambetov's direction manages to do some interesting things, much as he has done in other films like Wanted and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. His ability to evoke panic and dread is on full display here; we can sense Amy's hesitation and even incompetence in her absence, when we're stuck on a screen with Bilel calling or in a video chat with him as her boss and/or boyfriend blow up her chat box. That said, I should also note something that may or may not have been intentional: while this is no horror film, anyone with anxiety or OCD should approach with caution. Amy has so many bloody windows up on her desktop at any given time that I constantly felt sick. Texts, Skype messages and calls, facetime windows, web browsers (with multiple tabs), and her own file explorer (with a ridiculous amount of downloads) all cover a desktop with absolutely no organization at all. It's an exercise in exactly how not to manage your own computer, especially for someone whose job is to investigate, report, and even go undercover. How she manages to pay her own rent is a feat worthy of accolades.

Moreover, there is little to no actual thrill element to the film, and it is here that it irredeemably falters. By the end, when (spoiler alert, in case you're incapable of seeing where this might be going) Amy backs out of flying to Bilel, she begins to rightfully fear for her life. But, as the plot finally gets to its most thrilling and potentially terrifying climax, it ends. There is no clear understanding that Amy's story was successful. There is no payoff with Amy and her boyfriend or boss. There isn't even a clear way to determine whether she survives.

Perhaps that's the point, and perhaps that's even the way the supposedly true-to-life story panned out, but it makes all the preceding action and ideas thematically irrelevant and all the plot inconsequential. This movie would have been terrifying if it had a better ending...and if it had been released three or more years ago.