One thing cinema has struggled to struggled to harness is the fear that can come from that chaotic, lawless land known as the Internet. While other talents have tried to jack up the frights by offering up haunted websites, curses delivered online and various other flashy gimmicks, one film dared to suggest just how terrifying it can be without any of that extraneous, obvious stuff. When it’s 3 in the morning, you’ve tumbled down some viral rabbit hole and in your tired state you realise just how highly suggestible you could be, that’s when you know We’re All Going To The World’s Fair is actually something special.
The debut feature of Jane Schoenbrun – who went on to give us the similarly trippy I Saw The TV Glow and Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma – WAGTTWF manages to tap into emotions and feelings that comes from and addiction to creepypastas and viral challenges that other movies, thus far, have failed to reach.
Casey is a lonely, teenage girl who spends the majority of life online, while living with her practically invisible father who is constantly absent due to the multiple jobs he works. Seemingly lacking any sort of face to face, human interaction of any kind, Casey is highly interested in various online challenges and viral rumours and decides to do the “World’s Fair Challenge” while recording the results for her meagre following of her channel. Apparently, what the Challenge consists of is her saying “I want to go to the World’s Fair” three times, drawing blood with a pin badge, smearing it on her screen and then watching a strobe light video, with the rumoured results apparently involving physical and mental changes that have been detailed in numerous other videos.
After detailing that she used to sleepwalk when she was younger, Casey reveals that the reason she wanted to subject herself to the challenge was because she wanted to experience a horror film from within, but in all likelihood, her crippling loneliness and disconnection from virtually everything has her scrabbling for a purpose, and as the days pass, she posts awkward videos about her “journey”. However, matters ramp up when a video is posted to her by a user calling himself “JLB” that shows her face all distorted while during the strobe video and features such butt clenching warnings as “YOU ARE IN TROUBLE” and “I NEED TO TALK TO YOU”.
It seems that JBL has been collaborating with others that have tried the World’s Fair Challenge and has been documenting their progress as they go and urges he Casey to send him more videos as her changes continue. However, as each video gets more and more disturbing, we start to wonder what is actually going on – is the vial challenge real and Casey is indeed becoming something else, or is her isolated mindset actually breaking down and she’s filming her own decent into some sort of mental illness? But regardless of which one is true, what is JLB’s role in all of this?
Like I alluded to earlier, anyone expecting (or hoping) for the next FeardotCom will most likely be confused at the insular, introspective path the movie takes as it examins the mental toll of viral challenges and legends such as the Momo Hoax. In fact, when I discovered that Schoenbrun’s previous, pre-feature work included a documentary about the effects of the Slender Man legend, entitled A Self-Induced Hallucination, it made World’s Fair make even more sense; especially once the climactic cat is out of the bag and the film reveals what it’s really about. But until then, Schoenbrun manages to accurately portray the life of a directionless, introverted teen, hopelessly reliant on the constantly shifting and frequently treacherous world of deep diving on the Internet. It’s a grim existence as Casey seems to have zero friends, both in person or online (her video views aren’t even close to making triple digits) and the only interaction she seems to have with her constantly off-screen father is when he’s yelling at her to keep the noise down at 3am.
And yet, the promise of being infected with some sort of online curse means that Casey finally has some sort of purpose or value, and with a addition of JLB suddenly warning her that the effects of the challenge will start to transform her, things start to get legitimately creepy. However, the fact that Schoenbrun treats this all dead seriously and without a jot of the fantastical means that the moments where Casey starts experiencing her breaks of reality are extra creepy. Be it her pulling a malevolent smile in her sleep, suddenly screaming hysterically the middle of a dance routine, or slathering herself in toothpaste, dousing herself with a black light and mutilating a beloved cuddly toy, its amazing how genuinely unnerving the director makes things with such a subtle touch.
Anna Cobb goes all in as the rapidly disintegrating Casey and the film gets an incredible amount of milage from those large, soulful and painfully empty eyes being constantly pointed directly at the screen, and an further amount of stress comes from the introduction of Michael Rogers’ JLB as we discover that he’s a similarly lonely older man, and thus suggests that another kind of online danger has reared its head. However, Schoenbrun isn’t interested in going the basic thriller route, and instead opts to give us constantly surprising twists and reveals that tell a far deeper and ultimately moving story. The isolation Casey feels and the validation she’s desperately searching for mirror generations of teens who are relying more and more on the Internet for stimulation and are far too involved for the rather simplified solution of “touching grass” to do any good.
As the story rounds third base, Schoenbrun gradually drops out the notion of the supernatural entirely – deciding instead to go psychological – but ensuring that they deploy empathy as they go to paint a picture of a girl so lost, she doesn’t even fully understand the full parameters of the game she’s supposed to be playing.
However, extra points have to go to the filmmaker for looking for hope in such an initially bleak film, as the final coda may not do much for hardened fans looking for a cheap jolt, but will speak volumes to those who know what true loneliness and despair really is. At no point does Schoenbrun shoot for easy answers and when you add the filmmakers personal experience’s to the the mix, Casey’s desire to become something else starts to take on far more meaning than just someone racking up far too much screen time.
At turns thoughtful, dreamlike, achingly sad and genuinely creepy, We’re All Going To The World’s Fair manages to be something of an arresting debut for a filmmaker intrigued with blending popular culture with mind bending, reality warping chills. The notion of Creepypasta has never been more delicious…
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