We're All Going to the World's Fair - 2022
This review contain spoilers.
Viewing We’re All Going to the World’s Fair was, shall I say, a confounding experience. I generally like to keep my exposure to a bare minimum, so I go into a film pretty blind. For whatever reason (surely some act of masochism) however, this time around I took a peek at Rottentomatoes before sitting down to watch it. Rarely have I seen such a wide disparity between the critical and audience score.
But in this case, it makes sense. I spent the first 40 minutes of the picture infuriated with its nothingness. Here, that is a stand in for an array of voyeuristic YouTube-esque clips of a teen girl doing, well, not much. Then something clicked into place in the final 20. I became convinced that this is a stunning visual work that actually has something to say.
To accomplish this, director Jane Schoenbrun gets confrontational. She casts a light on the audience itself, and demands of us an explanation for our own distracted peeping. Of course, the stand in for the viewer here is the character of JLB. At first, we are suspicious that he is representative of a far seedier, dark underbelly online. But eventually we grow distressed to learn that not only is he NOT pedophilic, but in point of fact, we can identify him MOST clearly when staring into a mirror.
Yes, he is us. And so through a picture which threatens to be far too far up it’s own rectum for the better part of its runtime (read: masquerading dull successions of images/events as high “art”), We’re All Going to the World’s Fair packs a wallop in the denouement.
The key moment is when JLB says “we need to go off game.” The artifice crumbles completely. We realize in a moment that this was not some folk horror flick a la The Empty Man. No, it was an online game with many “trailheads.” Unfortunately, a teen struggling with her identity in the face of an invisible, global audience got lost within its intricate construction.
As did we, as it turns out. In a flash, Schoenbrun subverts this new wave of online horror. In fact, the only thing truly frightening here is the series of characters whose only real connections exist in parasocial relationships. Yet, how well do individuals cloak themselves behind usernames and screens. There is really just no telling who is actually on the other end of the line. And that, should give us all pause.
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