Chad White
Loves: This entire cast
Likes: The message of the movie
Dislikes: Social media
Hates: Stalkers
#IAmIngrid
From the outset, Ingrid Goes West claims its position and sticks to it. A combination of Aubrey Plaza’s acting and the wonderful behind the scenes work help paint a picture of true to life creepiness. The script is funny and devastating. The supporting characters do well in dealing with the ramifications of their actions. A bleak ending makes the previous 90 minutes feel all for naught. Ingrid Goes West is a needed gem in indie comedies.
Plaza takes on the role of Ingrid Thorburn. From minute one, she’s displayed as a freakish stalker as she storms into a wedding – sweats and all - she wasn’t invited to. Flashbacks and neatly placed exposition narration flesh out her backstory but don’t explain why she acts in her obsessive ways. Ingrid then finds an Instagram famous poster played by Elizabeth Olsen and uses over a hundred thousand dollars from her mother’s life insurance payout in order to bankroll her move out west to stalk Olsen’s Taylor Sloane. There, she rents a room from O’Shea Jackson Jr’s Batman loving Dan Pinto, befriends both Taylor and her husband Ezra (Wyatt Russell) and spends every last dime on mimicking Taylor’s lifestyle.
If anything, Ingrid Goes West is a cautionary tale. Plaza’s performance is eerily accurate with how a stunted, phone scrolling youth of today would act given the same circumstances. The way she likes every single photo in her Instagram feed or how she waits at a restaurant in order to see Taylor are the tip of the proverbial ice berg. But it’s when the two become friends (through circumstances instigated by Ingrid) that the movie takes shape. Ingrid becomes an extension of Taylor in just a single day, only showing her true colors when her famous friend sleeps or when the Instagram star befriends her brother Nicky’s (Billy Magnussen) new girlfriend (Pom Klementieff).
The script from director Matt Spicer and co-writer David Branson Smith is smartly executed. Moments of uncomfortability are met with steady laughs. Ingrid is a devious individual capable of concocting plans that would ruin anyone’s day. A later scene convincing her landlord/new boyfriend Dan to kidnap Nicky, take him to the desert and threaten him is thrillingly uprooted by the cracks in the idea. And that’s only one layer of the scheme. Spicer and Branson inject a lot of personality into the movie and it pays off. In the end, Ingrid’s want of fame and friends pays off but at the biggest cost.
Should you watch Ingrid Goes West?
It’s one of the most consistent comedy movies of the year. Plaza’s acting, Spicer’s direction and the script are excellent. Don’t let this one fly under the radar.
Notes
- Too many times during this movie Ingrid does some horrible stuff to Jackson’s character including stealing and destroying his truck on two separate occasions.
- The fight Ingrid and Taylor undergo in the final act is intense. Never have such hurtful words been said. It was steeped in truth and no one looked good after.
- I will never hear “All My Life” the same way again.