Mark Reviews Movies: WE'RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD'S FAIR

We're All Going to the World's Fair, Utopia

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 14, 2022

The internet was supposed to connect the world. While it has in terms of sharing information and having access to the other people, there's an argument to be made that the most popular trends and platforms of online culture make us more alone than ever. There's a whole world out there, right at our fingertips, but that's also where the sense of tangible connection ends.

That's the running theme of writer/director Jane Schoenbrun's We're All Going to the World's Fair, a film that's equal parts eerie and melancholy as it explores how a teenage girl's life is overtaken by an online role-playing game. It's frightening, not only because it suggests the possibility that some of this creepy game might be real, but also because the reality of the game doesn't matter. It's real to this kid, and as she becomes more and more entrenched in the weird history and stranger side effects of playing, the game seems to become her only sense of reality. It's perilous for her physical safety and mental well-being, to be sure, and there's a distinct possibility that the danger might extend to others.

The girl is Casey (Anna Cobb, whose performance is proudly announced—with good reason—as her feature debut in the credits). She lives in an ordinary house near a forest and outside some all-American town, where the busy roads pass by strip malls and closed-down stores. This girl spends a good amount of time on the internet, specifically on her laptop.

Schoenbrun begins the story with a static long-take, shot from the perspective of Casey's laptop camera, and there's a distinct feeling of claustrophobia to the point-of-view and the backdrop—the girl's attic bedroom, with sloping and pointed ceilings, minimal lighting, and glow-in-the-dark stickers that falsify a field of stars. Initially, this seems to be one of those found-footage or recreated-desktop sort of horror stories or thrillers, but after the lengthy opening shot of Casey starting her experience with the game, the filmmaker's camera becomes a more traditional, objective, and mobile observer of the girl's life. The scary and sad part of that is how the atmosphere feels as confined and enveloping as the introductory, stationary view.

The game itself remains something of a mystery. Casey knows and enacts the basic first steps: thrice pronouncing, "I want to go to the World's Fair," and pricking her finger until there's enough blood to leave a streak on her laptop's monitor. With that completed, she watches a prescribed video, which we only see as continuous, alternating flashes of blue, purple, and white light emanating from the screen. With that, it's now Casey's task to keep track of, record, and publish whatever side effects result from performing this ritual.

Schoebrun's story is less about the specific mystery of the game, which is the driving force of the minimal plot that exists here, and more about how Casey's experiences within it reveal just how lonely her online and real-world existences actually are. In her life, she spends her days in her room, walking by herself through town and in the woods, and watching online videos of other people and the effects they have had in playing the game.

Casey stays in her room, because her father is elsewhere in the house. There's a sorrowful moment in which Casey, eating dinner at the kitchen table, takes her plate upstairs to the attic as soon as the headlights of her father's car illuminate the darkened room. All we know of the unseen father is that reaction and his imposing yells when Casey plays some music too loudly.

There's no sign of Casey's mother, except, perhaps, that her absence defines the father's behavior. There is, though, a heartbreaking scene in which Casey, unable to sleep one night, walks down to the garage, lies on the couch, and puts an online video on a projector. It's of a stranger, whispering calming phrases as a mother might in trying to lull a child to sleep. While this is a virtual substitute, it's no palpable replacement, and isn't that the larger problem with that equal feeling of connection and distance that comes with just about any online interaction?

This film understands that and communicates it with simplicity and patience. In a way, this is a horror story, because there are elements here that spark the darker corners of one's imagination. Casey finds others online who are documenting the changes they've felt and seen since taking part in the challenge. While what we see is almost certainly fake (a woman who claims to be turning into plastic and a man who develops green scabs on his skin—before pulling something out of his flesh), there's still the question of whether or not Casey, who finds her father's rifle and starts making insinuations of violence, actually believes it.

Then, there's the question of the other significant player in the story and the game. He's known only as JLB (Michael J Rogers), an adult man who exists online behind a smiling avatar but who also lives a lonely, isolated life. A self-purported expert on the game's origins and lore, he offers Casey some advice and, as the girl's thoughts become more sinister, friendship. One doesn't need to think too deeply about why this connection is discomforting or how twisted it is that something that would be so transparently suspicious in real life seems almost ordinary in the realm of the internet.

The fear and sadness of We're All Going to the World's Fair are probably best summarized by the intrinsic irony of its title. In the virtual world, the trip is a solo enterprise, and in reality, no one's going anywhere.

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