Ingrid Goes West

Aubrey Plaza shines as an unhinged internet stalker in this sharp satire that feels like The King of Comedy for the Instagram generation

Film Review by Jamie Dunn | 16 Nov 2017
Film title: Ingrid Goes West
Director: Matt Spicer
Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O'Shea Jackson Jr, Billy Magnussen, Wyatt Russell, Pom Klementieff
Release date: 17 Nov
Certificate: 15

“Another day, another avocado toast.” That’s the Instagram post that fires an unhealthy obsession in Ingrid (Aubrey Plaza), the disturbed young woman with boundary issues at the heart of this pin-sharp social media satire. The sender of this banal missive is Instagram “influencer” Taylor, played by Elizabeth Olsen, who’s “living her best life” in LA with her artist boyfriend (Wyatt Russell) while promoting overpriced hipster brands to her thousands of followers on social media. Ingrid, who has just lost her mother to a terminal illness, is instantly smitten with this boho lifestyle and begins a plan to insinuate herself into Taylor’s world by Going West to her Venice Beach neighbourhood and tracking her down using the breadcrumbs of posts she leaves online.

Plaza’s appeal as an actor has always been the lunacy that seems to be lurking behind her huge eyes. We see a glimpse of this mania in Ingrid Goes West’s opening scene, as our eponymous anti-hero pepper-sprays her “best friend” on her wedding day – an act that sees her spend some time in a mental institution. Once we arrive in California, writer-director Matt Spicer slowly shifts the camera’s sceptical gaze away from Ingrid towards the Insta-ready couple, who turn out to be just as delusional as their online stalker.

Taylor, for example, thinks of herself as a “photographer” rather than walking branded content, and she’s fond of posting inspirational quotes by the likes of Joan Didion and Norman Mailer, despite not having read a lick of either. She is at least superficially successful. Her BF Ezra, who specialises in idiotic pop-art featuring slogans like “#blessed” and “OMG”, has only one patron: Ingrid. She pays through the nose for his masterwork, “SQUAD GOALS”.

Potshots at social media phonies and talentless artists may be low hanging fruit, but Ingrid Goes West has a sophisticated visual humour that compensates for the fish-in-a-barrel shooting. Cinematographer Bryce Fortner films Ingrid’s scenes with Taylor – such as their coke-fuelled trip to Joshua Tree, or J-Tree as Taylor calls it – as if through an Instagram filter, while back at Ingrid’s spartan pad the lighting flips back to reality.

The best jokes often emanate from Plaza’s physical awkwardness as she tries to mimic Taylor’s show-off poses and photogenic pouting. The Park & Rec actor’s kooky charm is the only reasonable explanation for her character remaining strangely likable in the face of her awful behavior. As with De Niro’s deplorable Rupert Pupkin in the similarly themed King of Comedy, you’ll find yourself rooting for this psychopath.

Similarly to that Scorsese movie, there’s as much pathos here as there is dark comedy. If it’s genuine belly laughs you’re after, however, Ingrid Goes West has a ace up its sleeve in the form of O’Shea Jackson Jr (a dead ringer for his father, Ice Cube). He plays Ingrid’s stoner landlord, Dan, and he’s the closest thing the movie has to a decent human being. The actor is endlessly charismatic, while his character is that perennial LA stereotype: the wannabe screenwriter.

When Dan first meets Ingrid he proclaims a deep ardour for Batman and reveals he’s writing a sequel. Crucially, it’s not to Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, but a follow-up to Joel Schumacher’s gaudy late 90s efforts Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. Turns out some obsessions are even more disturbing than Instagram.


Released by Universal

https://twitter.com/ingridgoeswest