It’s not often that I screen a movie and dislike it so much, that I end up turning it off. Profile, made me do exactly that. However, after sleeping on it, I decided to give it another chance… and made it all the way to the end.
This movie is actually based on a real-life story. Which, to me, is fascinating. Young girls being recruited over social media to give up the lives they lead to convert to Islam and travel to a foreign country. Only to find it isn’t all what they were told it would be. I know reporters will do what they need to do to get the story, but our main character, Amy (Valene Kane), out of desperation for money, takes on this assignment and gets waaaay too involved. Even after her employers say to kill the story, because of how dangerous it’s becoming. She continues on.
Now I think the story idea itself was great, the execution of the whole thing was what I did not enjoy at all. Watching a movie that is basically just a one-shot of computer monitor the whole way thru, gets boring really quick. Plus it was hard to keep up with how fast they were clicking on new windows, typing messages, opening, and closing windows. It was hard to keep up and keep track of who Amy was communicating with. With all the multi conversations, I kept thinking she was gonna send the wrong message to the wrong person and not realize it. For me, it was just confusing.
In the past, there have been other films made this way, but just like those, it didn’t work for me. It’s a big waste of a great story to use such a low-budget way of making a movie.