Tag: Timur Bekmambetov

[North Bend Film Fest] PROFILE Review: Going Undercover Online

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By: Emily von Seele

Profile

Based on a true story, Profile is the latest “Screenlife” film to hit the public consciousness. Rather than a traditional approach, “Screenlife” tells an entire story through numerous windows and apps on a computer screen. The concept has previously been seen in Nacho Vigalondo’s Open Windows, and both Unfriended and Unfriended: Dark Web; in Profile, Timur Bekmambetov works to stretch the approach to tell a story over the course of several weeks, rather than in real time over the course of a couple of hours. It’s a successful illustration of the concept, seamlessly bridging multiple video chats and calls with a series of messages, video clips, and other media to tell a complex and tense story.

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The Dangers of Life Online in UNFRIENDED (2015)

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By: Nolan McBride

Unfriended 1

When Unfriended arrived in 2015,  the found footage subgenre was already on the decline, having saturated the market for the previous five or six years following the success of movies like Paranormal Activity. The format, it seemed, was wearing thin, prone to being too formulaic and one-note (though, to this day, I’ll still give most of them a shot). The movie reviewed well and grossed a ton of money relative to its meager budget ($1 million), but it seemed to exit the conversation just as quickly as it had arrived.

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