‘Profile’ Film Review: Journalist Catfishes ISIS Fighter in Tense Online Thriller
Timur Bekmambetov’s portrait of a screen-to-screen relationship is timely, although it mostly scratches the surface
Carlos Aguilar | May 11, 2021 @ 5:00 PM
BEZELEVS/Focus
Expanding the digital-age subgenre of films entirely told on computer screens from the personal (“Searching”) and the supernatural (“Unfriended”) into the geopolitical, “Profile” is a tense on-camera thriller based on a real-life case dealing with international terrorism.
In 2014, French journalist Anna Erelle, using a fake identity, established a pretend romantic relationship with an ISIS jihadist via Skype. The objective was to learn about their tactics to recruit and transport young European women into Syria. Her hazardous ordeal is documented in the book “In the Skin of a Jihadist.”