Review: Ingrid Goes West

A Single White Female or The King of Comedy for the Facebook generation, Ingrid Goes West is an often sharply observed satire of how the identity you present to the world is not necessarily who you are. Others may appear to have #blessed lives, but remember that social media allows people to shape their narrative and construct their images to create an often fictionalised and idealised reality.

Yet social media is, like many aspects of life, merely another variation of high school where believing that knowing the right people paves the way for a happier life. Ingrid (Aubrey Plaza) is an outsider; her mother, who seems to have been her only companion and supporter, has recently died and her friend Charlotte has excluded her from her wedding. A wedding whose pictures Charlotte scrolls through on Instagram, her social media drug of choice, and whose reception is taking place a few feet away from her. The unhinged Ingrid crashes the wedding, maces the bride, and is taken away to a mental asylum. It turns out that she and Charlotte were never friends at all; Ingrid had simply crafted a whole friendship out of a sympathetic comment that Charlotte made on one of her posts.

Released from the asylum, Ingrid marinates in loneliness, her feed her only connection to the world. So when she happens upon an article about social media influencer Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen), Ingrid can't help but be affected by Taylor's glamorous neo-hippie L.A. lifestyle. When Taylor makes the mistake of responding to one of Ingrid's comments on her feed, that gives Ingrid the green light to cash in her $60K inheritance and head out West. Once in Venice Beach, she rents an apartment from Batman fanatic, marijuana lover and aspiring screenwriter Dan Pinto (O'Shea Jackson Jr.) and starts visiting all of Taylor's haunts, eating the same healthy food (though she still prefers fast food), buying the same purse, getting the same hair style and colour, and hoping to run into her new best friend. The two women eventually cross paths...after Ingrid kidnaps Taylor's dog Rothko and returning it to a grateful Taylor and her artist husband Ezra (Wyatt Russell).

Soon Ingrid is hanging out with her new BFF, adapting her lifestyle to reflect Taylor's tastes, and chronicling her shiny happy new life on Instagram. Yet Ingrid is too blinded by her obsession with Taylor to see through the lies that Taylor is passing off as truths. Ingrid's possessiveness resurfaces when Taylor's jacked-up brother Nicky (Billy Magnussen) shows up on the scene, threatening the bond that Ingrid has cultivated with Taylor.

Director Matt Spicer and co-screenwriter David Branson Smith were awarded the Waldo Salt Screenwriting prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and they demonstrate a keen understanding of how people live their lives on virtual validation. The dynamic between the equally excellent Plaza and Olsen is so perfectly pitched that it's a bit of a letdown when the story veers off into broader comic territory instead of remaining focused on calling out how we allow our emotions and identities to be manipulated and ruled by the carefully curated personas people present of themselves.

Ingrid Goes West

Directed by: Matt Spicer

Written by: Matt Spicer, David Branson Smith

Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Wyatt Russell, Billy Magnussen, Pom Klementieff, Hannah Utt