Timur Bekmambetov’s film about a journalist investigating
Women online being lured to
Syria is silly but effective
![Profile review – Skyping-with-Isis thriller dials up the suspense](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b1a184bd41f5721388473dc4e0e695f696482d55/2_0_1382_829/master/1382.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctcmV2aWV3LTMucG5n&enable=upscale&s=e5b55a15cd80112111bdf802b2d7715b)
Cinema is currently deciding how it meets the challenge of representing the way modern life and modern experience is increasingly happening online. The recent supernatural horror-thriller Unfriended had the ingenious idea of playing out its entire drama on one computer screen in real time, a kind of found-footage 2.0, switching between Facebook, Skype and instant messaging, the various prompts all bleeping and pinging away disturbingly as a sinister presence looms up.
Russian director Timur Bekmambetov (who went to
Hollywood in the last decade for brash and crass movies such as Wanted) has applied this approach to a thriller that asks the eternal question: what happens when cops or reporters with unsatisfactory home lives go undercover among people who actually treat them rather well?
Profile is based on the 2015 non-fiction bestseller In the Skin of a Jihadist by a French journalist who now has round-the-clock
police protection and has changed her name to Anna Erelle. She was investigating the phenomenon of young European women being radicalised online and lured to Syria; Erelle created a fake profile on
Facebook and began chatting to a senior
Islamic State commander who then tried to lure her over, repeatedly promising her that she would be his “bride”. A very dangerous game.