Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Ingrid becomes obsessed with a social network star named Taylor Sloane who seemingly has a perfect life. But when Ingrid decides to drop everything and move west to be Taylor's friend, her behaviour turns unsettling and dangerous.
Ingrid Goes West is elevated almost entirely by Aubrey Plaza's committed, fearless lead performance, which captures the brittle desperation of social media obsession with uncomfortable precision. Elizabeth Olsen is equally sharp as the hollow influencer Taylor. The plot is a solid dark comedy of manners that follows a fairly predictable descent arc — the satire of Instagram culture is pointed but not particularly deep. Cinematography is competent and sun-drenched in ways that serve the California aesthetic without being remarkable. The film arrived at a culturally timely moment and its skewering of performative authenticity felt fresh in 2017, though the themes have since become well-trodden. The ending is its weakest element — the final note undermines the film's darker satirical thrust by pivoting to an ambiguous quasi-redemption that feels both unearned and thematically muddled, softening a story that might have landed harder with more conviction.