Plaza shines in thoughtfully odd Ingrid Goes West

Elizabeth Olsen and Aubrey Plaza in Ingrid Goes West. Image courtesy Neon Rated.

What makes Ingrid Goes West fun in a strange way is how it makes audiences feel and think as the credit rolls. It’s entirely fair to have an icky feeling when leaving the theater, perturbed by the oddness of Aubrey Plaza's eponymous social media stalker, her easy ability to manipulate herself into the life of the seemingly perfect Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen) troublesome in many ways. The movie is designed in part to cause the viewer to feel a little off from enjoying it, whether it is the awkward humor or the hints of sympathy directed toward Ingrid. This movie excels at being enjoyable awkward.

Ingrid Goes West is ostensibly a comedy about a stalker who inserts herself into a stranger's life out of a need for some love and affection. Along the way Ingrid disrupts the lives of Taylor's husband (Wyatt Russell), brother (Billy Magnussen) and a landlord who has a severe crush on her (a charmingly nerdy O'Shea Jackson Jr.). That this movie still classifies as a comedy and not a horror/thriller like Single White Female (a movie that gets a name drop in this one) is due to a solid script from writers David Branson Smith and Matt Spicer (Spicer also directs) and a killer lead performance by Plaza. Best known for as the dour April Ludgate, Plaza finds the right balance between subtly strange and completely off kilter, keeping what could be a caricature very human and pretty funny. She makes it funny and sad to watch Ingrid scroll through Instagram and like every post she sees, a meaningless gesture that is heartbreaking in the loneliness it projects.

Scenes like that make it easy to paint Ingrid Goes West as some sort of parable about the dangers of social media and how much the spread of otherwise useless personal information to a mass audience lessens the importance of personal connection. And it sort of is a warning of sorts, although it is less about how someone like Ingrid can sidle her way into someone's life and more about what social media allows people to do. Several post modern writers have made this point before, but the downside to social media is the emptiness it promotes. Taylor is defined largely by her social media presence, enough to replace any semblance of personality she had prior to becoming an Instagram star. Her intellectual strummings are gleaning by slight readings of important work, the image of being intelligent and thoughtful just as valuable as actually being so. Quoting Norman Mailer or Joan Didion means nothing if there's no understanding of why they said it and what that quote means on a personal level. So it makes sense for Taylor to feel repulsed by Ingrid as the film progresses. Ingrid is a facsimile of the Instagram starlet whose attempts at copying result in her becoming a slightly more real version of Taylor herself. Taylor pretends to read the texts she flaunts; Ingrid does so and finds meaning to it. That Ingrid is better at being Taylor than Taylor is a little horrifying on its own merits, as it exposes Taylor for being a shell of a free spirit. Even if Ingrid's obsessive nature hadn't been revealed, Smith and Spicer make it clear there is no way the relationship could last beyond a few fleeting moments.

Then again, a person can only achieve a certain level of fame if they haven't provided their audience at least a modicum of honesty to go with it. Despite being a failed attempt at simulacrum, Ingrid is at least honest about her emptiness and tries to find something to fill the void that is her life. She does show a few moments of honest sympathy, more than Taylor musters, and Ingrid Goes West concludes with the most honest moment of her life. The result is a sad and terrifying happy ending, a moment in which a character wins and it remains unclear what she'll do with her victory. What little growth Ingrid shows in the film isn't rooted in the firmest of soil, and the glow of joy on her face is disturbing and a testament to Plaza's performance; she sells the ambiguity of the moment perfectly.

All of this is a little heavy for a concept, but it goes to show there is a good amount of subtext worth diving into in Ingrid Goes West, a credit to Smith and Spicer for finding depth in a technology rooted in human emptiness. Smith and Spicer understand that the value of Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms resides within that emptiness itself, not just finding the best version of a person but revealing the ugliness underneath the facade. That the exploration of the shallowness is this entertaining and well made is a bonus.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 97 minutes

Genre: Comedy

Ask Away

Target audience: Viewers who want to see Aubrey Plaza go off the rails.

Take the whole family?: This isn't the hardest R film, but still keep the kids at home.

Theater or Netflix?: Not a vital theater experience but worth the trip if it’s playing near you.

What kind of funny is this movie?: While this is a comedy, it isn't quite a guffaw inducing movie. The humor is tied less to antics and more to a mix of awkward humor and outright nihilistic jokes in which the punchline is the action didn't really matter anyway. This is definitely one of those movies in which a personal view of the comedy will define the appreciation of the movie.

Watch this as well?: This is pretty comparable to The Talented Mr. Ripley with more comedy and slightly less homoerotic subtext to work from.