STARS: 4/5
What’s the worst that can possibly stem from social media obsession? This is the realistic and terrifying question new satire film “Ingrid Goes West” encourages audiences to answer.
When we first meet twenty-something titular character Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza), she’s in tears, incessantly scrolling through her Instagram feed filled with photos from a wedding she wasn’t invited to. Soon enough, she crashes the ceremony, pepper-sprays the bride and is sent away for a short stay in a mental hospital.
After she’s released, she quickly returns to her lonely life, spending her time browsing Instagram and stuffing her face with gas station junk food — until she finds the Instagram account of it-girl “influencer,” Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen).
Sloane’s character provides Ingrid with a new obsession, someone whose validation would mean making it in the world. This prompts her to cash out the inheritance her recently deceased mother left her and move to Los Angeles. There, she rebrands herself and creates a way to involve herself in Taylor’s perfectly manicured and expertly stylized life, befriending her and her anti-establishment, no-talent artist husband, Ezra (Wyatt Russell).
A majority of the rest of the movie is dedicated to exposing the shallow and vapid culture people like Taylor associate themselves with. In one spot-on scene, Taylor makes a car mechanic literally lay on the ground to get the right angle in a photo. It’s comical, but at the same time, it’s all too real.
What’s resonant is that we all know a few people like Taylor, desperate to project an image of success, stability and substance through internet personas but shallow and unhappy in reality. A debate the film often wrestles with is what’s worse, Taylor’s excessive falsity or Ingrid’s disturbing obsession with Taylor and her online presence.
The film doesn’t provide any easy answers, but Ingrid’s character constantly drew my sympathy, while Taylor and her uber-hipster crew’s inauthentic and cruel behavior induced contempt. It’s almost tempting to say Ingrid’s social media obsession is just a product of her environment, and in a way, Ingrid is the victim here.
Regardless of the message about the state of social media first-time director Matt Spicer attempts to make, he is incredibly successful in satirically and accurately portraying our modern society.
The film succeeds in its subtleties, like the attention to detail of the production design (the framed picture of an avocado in Ingrid’s room) and the uncomplicated, deadpan script (“Damn girl, that looks yummy as f**k! What’s your email address?”).
The screenplay is spot-on, presenting the characters as a special breed of West Coast millennials, obsessed with brunch, #vibes and overusing superlatives. The humor in the dialogue is almost so subtle it’d be easy to miss if not familiar with the way millennials speak, but the representation of these characters is scarily accurate.
The performances by the main cast are also a huge selling point for the film, with Plaza’s all-in turn as obsessive Ingrid cementing her status as a well-respected actress in film today and Olsen’s perfect portrayal of a basic California blonde extending beyond the surface level.
The end of the film falls a bit flat, searching for an inkling of hope and normalcy that should not exist after the dark turn the film takes, but Spicer’s ultimate statement on modern-day social media culture and obsession still shines through.
“Ingrid Goes West” presents a nightmare situation that could only exist in our society today, and it should serve as an alarming reminder of the frightening power social media can have. It also leads us to consider the equally terrifying question: when it comes to social media, what’s next?
