We're All Going to the World's Fair will have a limited theatrical release on April 15, before its nationwide expansion and digital release on April 22.
Set in the world of creepypasta lore and online “challenges,” We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is a slow-burn horror drama that feels, at once, like a combination of elements from several recent movies, and yet a wholly original creation. It follows a young teenage girl, Casey (Anna Cobb), who gets sucked into an online role-playing game, replete with its own winding mythology, in the pursuit of some unspoken transformation. However, despite a premise that feels supernatural at the outset, the story is much more about loneliness and disconnect in the internet age. More introspective than explosive, it’s also one of the moodiest and most atmospheric coming-of-age films to emerge from the recent American independent scene.
Cobb, in her feature debut, navigates a difficult role with stunning precision. For much of the film, Casey is the only face on screen, beginning with an opening scene from her webcam’s point of view. Her teary-eyed trepidation, in the middle of her darkened attic bedroom, anchors us emotionally as she repeats the phrase “I want to go to the world’s fair” — a modern “Bloody Mary” urban legend of sorts, with minor self-mutilation thrown in for good measure (it’s only a pin prick, but it’s spine-chilling all the same). The next and final step in the “World’s Fair Challenge” is watching a hypnotic, strobing video clip, and while it’s one we don’t actually see, the camera remains transfixed on Casey, as Cobb walks a tightrope between hesitance and excitement. It’s hard not to feel like a participant in the ritual.
What is the intended result of this challenge? Casey isn’t quite sure herself, but she spends time scrolling through information (perhaps misinformation?) in the form of unsettling videos uploaded by other users. One in particular seems to hint at some kind of body horror, but the question of its veracity always looms. Is this challenge something real? Are these videos genuine? And how old is the urban legend? Beyond a point, it doesn’t seem to matter, especially when Casey is contacted by a mysterious older man, who goes only by “JLB” (Michael J. Rogers) and seems invested in both the lore as a whole and in Casey’s part in it (via her uploaded video diaries). Both characters are in search of some kind of connection, and Casey, with JLB’s help, keeps an eye out for anything that can be described as “change” — change in her body, change in her behavior, change in her very being.
The film often takes us outside Casey’s home as she wanders her rural surroundings. Sometimes we see the world through her vlogs, with her phone in selfie mode, but when we step outside this perspective, the camera tracks her from a great distance as she traverses empty spaces, as if anything but the way she captures herself — the few moments she’s in control of her own image — leads to feelings of spiritual disconnect. Casey, in her videos, mentions creepy out-of-body experiences that gel with the urban legend, but what she’s actually experiencing seems far more intimate. Perhaps it’s a form of dissociation, or perhaps some kind of gender dysphoria (Casey, the few times she leaves the house, dresses somewhat boyishly). The film’s writer-director-editor Jane Schoenbrun is non-binary, and in refusing to label what plagues Casey, they create a constant sense of fluidity — of possibility — through creeping long takes that make us ask the same questions Casey seems to ask of her own body and mind as she undergoes inexplicable emotional whiplash.
She doesn’t have the words to describe her experiences, and the place she turns for answers is filled with other people asking questions about their own bodies, and minds, and senses of self, via a game that feels in-step with a cult, ready to swallow up people who are vulnerable and lost. There are moments where We’re All Going to the World’s Fair seems to hint at a story of violent radicalization, and while it may not explicitly follow this instinct, it’s one of several possibilities that frequently appears, each tied to the way the internet — a form of connection experienced in isolation — can feel lonely and liberating all at once.
The film’s low budget goes hand in hand with its noisy visual texture. The many low-light scenes buzz with static even when Casey sits still, further enhancing the sense that even while nothing is physically unfolding, something is always happening beneath the surface. The music, by Alex G, is filled with rumbling tones that build intrigue, and jarring, sudden noises that feel like unnerving jolts from within your gut, as if the supposed transformations Casey is searching for aren’t contained by the screen. The more unpolished the movie feels, the more effective it ends up being, both as a transgender text and a sensory experience.
Were you to toss Paranormal Activity in a blender alongside the meditative body horror of Annihilation, the isolation of Bo Burnham’s Inside, the tenderness of Eighth Grade, and the paranoia of Room 237 — perhaps with a dash of phantasmagorical coming-of-age drama The Fits and the volatile vulnerability of Something in the Dirt — the resultant slosh would be something akin to We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. However, Shoenbrun’s film is also wholly original in its conception, so the aforementioned comparisons don’t really do it justice.
It is, at times, deeply sad, like when it turns a concept as simple as a go-to-sleep ASMR video into an enormous, haunting projection of how terribly in need of basic comfort Casey actually is (her home life is an unhappy specter that exists just off screen). In the moments Casey is confronted by images of herself, warped and manipulated by her mysterious, obsessive pen pal — who seems just as unspeakably lonely as she is — these terrifying pictures, meant to draw her attention, become a reflection of how contorted she feels on the inside, which is perhaps why she reaches back out to JLB despite the potential dangers. Perhaps, like most of us, she just wants to be seen, even if the notion of connection and comfort, across a lonely digital void, is a horror all on its own.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/yf8tglY
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