We're All Going to the World's Fair uses the language of creepypasta horror to meditate on the way the internet has reshaped a generation's identity.
When it premiered at Sundance a year ago, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair couldn’t help but look like a mirror held up to its audience, reflecting back the isolation of the average virtual viewer. It helped to experience this haunting microbudget mood piece months upon months into the pandemic, and through a laptop screen, the same black hole that absorbs its teenage heroine.
More specifically, she’s drawn to a role-playing game called The World’s Fair, in which participants utter a Candyman-like mantra into their devices, then creatively document the supposed supernatural changes their bodies and minds undergo. We first meet Casey as she’s joining the game, through a webcam session that serves as the film’s extended opening shot.
Is Casey really being sucked into the hungry maw of the internet, letting go of herself post by post? Or is she just expertly taking her turn in a game, cosplaying a slow-motion breakdown? Schoenbrun keeps the questions hanging like storm clouds, with a vital assist from their spookily opaque star.
But We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is no cautionary tale for concerned parents. Why sound an alarm about a world that’s already come to pass? The tone is more ambivalent, undercutting the anxiety with optimism. It’s there in a DIY appreciation for this particular subculture of storytellers and the creative victories of kids like Casey, a genuinely promising artist whether she considers herself one or not.
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