Stars: Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O'Shea Jackson Jr.
Storyline
Ingrid Thorburn is an unhinged social media stalker with a history of confusing "likes" for meaningful relationships. Taylor Sloane is an Instagram-famous "influencer" whose perfectly curated, boho-chic lifestyle becomes Ingrid's latest obsession. When Ingrid moves to LA and manages to insinuate herself into the social media star's life, their relationship quickly goes from #BFF to #WTF.
Writers: David Branson Smith, Matt Spicer, Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Wyatt Russell, Billy Magnussen, Pom Klementieff, Hannah Pearl Utt, Angelica Amor, Malika Williams, Vincent van Hinte, Tina Lorraine, Aidan Wallace, Jay Weingarten, Megan Griffey, Destiny Soria, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Cast: Aubrey Plaza -
Ingrid Thorburn
Elizabeth Olsen -
Taylor Sloane
O'Shea Jackson Jr. -
Dan Pinto
Wyatt Russell -
Ezra O'Keefe
Billy Magnussen -
Nicky Sloane
Pom Klementieff -
Harley Chung
Hannah Pearl Utt -
Nicole
Angelica Amor -
Cindy
Malika Williams -
Nurse
Vincent van Hinte -
Cashier
Tina Lorraine -
Therapist
Aidan Wallace -
Logan
Jay Weingarten -
Eden
Megan Griffey -
Bar Patron
Destiny Soria -
Cowgirl
Trivia:
Both Elizabeth Olsen and Pom Klementieff are part of the Marvel Studios' MCU portraying Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch and Mantis respectively. See more »
User Review
Author:
Rating: 10/10
How would Ingrid operate if not for social media? It occurs to me
watching this movie that social media, especially Instagram where
pictures probably tell much more about one's life (and with those
ever-so leading tells from the little description under the picture,
with those hashtags saying the most in the briefest visual
communication), doesn't create people to become more isolated and
depressed and incensed, but it certainly doesn't do much to help.
In the case of Ingrid, she is someone for who following someone on
Instagram is the lifeline into their lives, and if it doesn't create
those who are on the outside and need help and don't have it, it
exploits it for her. It's possible she could have seen the article
about Taylor, the Elizabeth Olsen character - but it's not very likely
*Taylor* would have become known as "The Best Friend," seemingly
every-so hip and trending, but also a welcome mat for... those who are
looking for a friend!
This is one of thoseultra-no-light-whatsoever-black comedies, and it's
comedic because we can recognize that low pit of loneliness and despair
and cringe along with everyone else as things become intense and
estranged and obfuscation and the truth collide (or some of us can - if
possible maybe some are secretly more like Taylor, hiding who they are
to be much cooler than they really are - or even Taylor's significant
other Ezra, who quits his job to become an artist but doesn't sell
anything, or maybe Dan is more like it, the would-be screenwriter
inspired by Batman Forever - stroke of genius, by the way, that he is
*not* inspired by The Dark Knight - or maybe one or two are Taylor's
brother Nicky, a real bastard who at least doesn't pretend *too* much
about who he is as a character out of a Brett Easton Ellis novel).
In other words, Ingrid Goes West does involve, on paper, one of those
psycho-stalker women who we usually see becoming attached to the
presumably more together other woman, but that's where the similarities
between those kind of movies (mostly) end. The tone is set at the
beginning for what one assumes is someone who is off the deep-end as
Ingrid f***s with another girl on her wedding. Why this happens is less
important than what comes immediately after as she's put into
psychiatric care. Will she try to better herself? Hardly, but it would
seem like she's not exactly dangerous... at least, not so right away.
I'd say there's a bit of the Rupert Pupkin in her, but I'm not sure if
she is precisely trying to be *famous* like he was, or has that goal -
or, to rephrase it, the goals of Pupkin then and Ingrid now are and
aren't the same.
Ingrid sees a way of life and wants to have something as close to that
as possible (through certain means that come through a believable plot
contrivance, if that makes sense, she doesn't have to work right away
and can use the pad via O'Shea Jackson's Batman friend), but it's more
than anything about... being friends with someone. It's a fascinating
dynamic since the movie is in a large way about her trying to figure
out if what Taylor has is what she *really* wants or to have an
authentic connection. While Matt Spicer's film (from his and Branson
Smith's script) has a lot of wildly funny moments - sometimes through
sheer surprise of 'That's genuinely f****ed' but also other times
through the simple act of capturing behavior in a wonderfully, insanely
exaggerated way - it's about deeper concerns that happen for people who
don't, necessarily, have a psycho-stalker hanging around them in the LA
hipster-ish-arts scene.
The Instagram and social media aspect is the key; we use these conduits
to connect together and, indeed, to show people how we're living our
lives (sometimes, as is mentioned casually and briefly but importantly,
sometimes if one is lucky one gets *paid* to post such things online
like a sponsor, hence Taylor's photography), but it also lessens how to
truly connect to a person. I don't imagine Ingrid's mother, who is dead
by the start of the movie, used social media, and this is a
relationship that mattered a lot and sort of broke Ingrid further than
she had been before (I don't also imagine she was ever exactly part of
any cliques exactly, but she did have *someone* to connect with face to
face on a fundamental level). So by the time a final, crucial
confrontation occurs, sort of right before the climax but in the midst
of it, what both sides say is true about the other.
Oh, and I should mention about now that the acting here is terrific.
Plaza, to be sure, is the stand-out and continues a
scorching-all-she-sees hot streak from her recent run on the show
Legion (which, in a rather odd way, this *could* be a tangential
prequel to, in way, maybe, sorta, I dunno), and she delivers on the
awkward/harsh comic timing, and yet more-so on the dramatic level. But
while without her, perhaps, the movie doesn't work as well, Olsen and
Jackson and even Russell for a couple of crucial scenes stand out as
well; Olsen, especially, gets to have a kind of character I'm not sure
she's played before, or at least like this, and the layers to her are
subtler to go for, and she digs in as much as she can (in a sense her
character's most honest time, ironically, is when she's bonding with
Ingrid on a drunken/coke-filled free for all, you'll find out why this
is, and it makes for an awesomely peculiar dynamic).
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