We're All Going To The World's Fair Review - An Intelligent Horror
When working with limited resources, filmmakers can either consider it as a challenge to conquer — whether by increasing money to the point where viewers don't notice, or by showcasing enough talent to the point where viewers don't care — or as a guiding principle. Some films, such as Searching and The Blair Witch Project, succeed in part because they accept their limits and present a tale that doesn't feel as though it could have been done better with more money. The most recent addition to this canon is Jane Schoenbrun's fiction feature debut, We're All Going to the World's Fair.
The movie begins with Casey (Anna Cobb) filming her initiation process for the World's Fair Challenge, ostensibly the scariest role-playing game on the internet. She has invited in a mdata-alignant power that will begin to change her after repeating a word three times, pricking her finger and smearing blood on her computer screen, and watching a specific movie, and she is supposed to document these changes in a series of YouTube videos. She watches a few other players' uploads and notices that they all have a loss of feeling in their bodies, so she starts there. She films a confessional without a jacket in the snowy woods outside her house, claiming not to notice the cold. When she begins to lose interest in playing at all, she receives a message from JLB (Michael J. Rodgers), another player, who pushes her to continue. However, as her films become more disturbing, it's unclear how much of her experience is a ruse.
That seems like a horror idea, and it is in some ways, but it isn't in others. Many scenes in We're All Going to the World's Fair are filmed on a screen, as if from the webcams Casey uses to record herself. Other players' YouTube videos are interspersed throughout the game. A non-diegetic camera occasionally accompanies the movie's protagonist, especially in the early scenes, and this distinction is crucial in this picture. Casey creates and watches videos that are performative, individual manifestations of a collective game. Each one is designed to terrify (and impress) the other participants.