I’ve never had an Instagram account, but I can definitely sympathize with the loneliness that drives Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza) to form manic parasocial relationships with online influencers in the biting dark comedy “Ingrid Goes West.” Most of my current social media activity is limited to Bluesky and Letterboxd, but even there, it’s easy to get caught up in the lives of popular personalities, to feel like you have a window into something genuine about who they are.
The sympathetic inclination toward Ingrid is what makes “Ingrid Goes West” work as a complex character study and not just an exercise in mockery. Ingrid is clearly unhinged as she sets her sights on glamorous influencer Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen), but she’s also dealing with grief, isolation and anxiety, following a mental health crisis that lands her in a professional treatment facility. That crisis involves stomping into a wedding and pepper-spraying the bride in the face, but it’s still legitimately traumatic for Ingrid.
No matter how dark “Ingrid Goes West” can get, it remains consistently stylish and funny, slyly satirizing social media obsessions that remain relevant nearly a decade after it was first released. Now streaming on Netflix, it’s the perfect movie for viewers to rediscover in our current age of constant online performativity.
‘Ingrid Goes West’ is a bold showcase for Aubrey Plaza
Although she had been in quite a few movies by the time “Ingrid Goes West” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017, Plaza was still best known for playing the sardonic April Ludgate on NBC sitcom “Parks and Recreation,” and “Ingrid Goes West” shows a welcome dark side to her persona that she further explored in movies like “Emily the Criminal” and “Black Bear” and on the FX series “Legion.” Ingrid is still a bit sardonic, but she’s also much more emotional than April, without the aloofness that came to define Plaza’s onscreen presence.
Plaza fully commits to the role of the mentally unstable Ingrid, from the moment she’s introduced frantically scrolling through the wedding-related posts of her initial stalking target, Charlotte Buckwald (Meredith Hagner), right before her ill-advised attack. Although Ingrid seems calmer during her stint in the treatment center, she wastes almost no time after getting out before selecting a new obsession in Taylor, whom she reads about in an issue of “Elle.”
The way that her hand shakes a bit before clicking “follow” on Taylor’s Instagram profile says a lot about Ingrid’s understanding of her own pathology, even though she immediately ignores that and dives headfirst into stalking Taylor. It’s hilarious to watch her type and then delete multiple deranged comments on Taylor’s posts before settling on something innocuous yet ingratiating enough to get her the information she’s looking for.
With the money she’s inherited from her recently deceased mother, Ingrid rents an apartment in Venice Beach, right down the street from Taylor, and befriends both Taylor and her husband Ezra (Wyatt Russell) after returning their “lost” dog — which is missing because Ingrid abducted it. This is clearly criminal behavior, but Plaza makes it weirdly endearing, and it helps that Taylor is obviously just as narcissistic and insecure as Ingrid, only able to hide it better, and bolstered by her substantial following.
‘Ingrid Goes West’ both understands and derides our social media fixations
When Ingrid has finally spent enough time with Taylor to make it into a photo with her, she prints out the Instagram post and frames it. That specific behavior may not be common, but that kind of social media thirst, especially for proximity to even moderately successful influencers (Taylor has 267,000 followers), is prevalent online. When she finds out which hipster restaurant Taylor frequents, Ingrid snaps a picture of the meal she’s ordered there, but gags on the food itself and spits it out.
Taylor is no less desperate, and Olsen plays her with a mix of warmth and phony friendliness. It’s a less showy performance than Plaza’s, but it’s equally important for capturing the movie’s takedown of vapid influencers. Taylor never even refers to herself as an influencer, instead describing her occupation as “photographer,” even though most of the time she has other people taking the photos, so she can appear in them.
It’s both pathetic and hilarious that Taylor and Ingrid would probably be perfect friends for each other if they could each be honest about their motivations. Instead, the only person who truly understands and cares about Ingrid is her neighbor Dan Pinto (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), a Batman-obsessed nerd who, in his own way, is just as odd and damaged as Ingrid, but takes a more optimistic approach to handling it.
At one point, Taylor’s lowlife brother Nicky (Billy Magnussen) refers to Ingrid as “single white female,” but her fixation never escalates to serious violence. “Ingrid Goes West” is just dark enough to convey the depths of its title character’s delusions, while remaining lively and witty rather than harrowing. No matter how terribly Ingrid behaves, redemption is always just one viral post away.
Stream “Ingrid Goes West” on Netflix now
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