Ingrid Goes West *** ½ / *****
Directed by: Matt Spicer.
Written by: David Branson Smith & Matt Spicer.
Starring: 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).
I thought a lot about Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy while watching Matt Spicer’s debut film – Ingrid Goes West. There are times when I think that The King of Comedy is Scorsese’s masterpiece – and even if it isn’t, it was certainly his most perceptive about where the culture was going. You update the clothes that DeNiro’s Rupert Pupkin wears and give him an iPhone, and you could pretty much remake the film the today – and it wouldn’t look like the crazy satire it looked like in 1983 – but rather a sketch of reality (put it alongside Sidney Lumet’s Network for 1976 – same thing). Ingrid Goes West doesn’t reach the levels of The King of Comedy – but its aim is in the right place. It is a film about a stalker, but this one isn’t obsessed with someone on TV – a remote person it is actually difficult to meet in real life – but rather someone she “met” on Instagram. What we in the audience (hopefully) know that Ingrid in the film doesn’t, is that knowing someone from Instagram isn’t like knowing them in real life – we all cultivate our image on Social Media to how we want to be perceived, not how we actually are. Ingrid knows as much about her object of obsession, Taylor (Elisabeth Olsen) as Pupkin did about Jerry Lewis’ talk show host in The King of Comedy – nothing. As played by Plaza, Ingrid is essentially a blank – a person with nothing on behind the eyes, no genuine feeling for other people. She sees Taylor’s Instagram feed when she gets out on the mental ward following another stalking incident that turned violent (maceing a woman on her wedding day because she wasn’t invited to the wedding) – so Ingrid decides to pack up, cash the life insurance cheque she got when her mom died, and move to California to become best friends with Taylor.
It’s clear from fairly early on that the life of Taylor – and her artist husband Ezra (Wyatt Russell) isn’t as perfect as Taylor proclaims it as on Instagram. Not that they’re miserable or anything – just that they are normal. They have the same fights about money, careers, family, etc. as every other couple has – but of course, you don’t post about that. This all flies by Ingrid, to whom nothing that isn’t perfect doesn’t really register (she remembers it all – but doesn’t acknowledge it). The arrival of Taylor’s brother Nicky (Billy Magnussen) threatens Ingrid’s newly found friendship (Ingrid has found ways to weasel herself in) – probably because Nicky is smart enough to see a fellow scammer. Ingrid has to rope in her new landlord – Dan (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) in some of her schemes.
Plaza is scary as Ingrid – because of that blankness. And yet, it is not a one note performance at all – she makes Ingrid someone to fear and pity at the same time – and she can be genuinely funny as well. I wish there was a little more depth to some of the other characters as well. Once we start to realize that Taylor isn’t as perfect as she pretends to be – and that her marriage isn’t either – there’s really not much more there (like everyone, she lies about what books she’s reading on social media). The movie veers to over-the-top territory in a kidnapping sequence (definitely trying for King of Comedy vibes there) – and then just kind of ends shortly after, in the way you probably expected it to from the beginning.
Yet, what works about the movie is excellent – it’s a genuine, sharp tongued satire of our modern age of social media, with another great performance by Aubrey Plaza. It’s funny and disturbing in equal doses – which is how it should be.
