Ingrid Goes West

Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Wyatt Russell, Billy Magnussen, Pom Klementieff
Directed by: Matt Spicer
Rating: R
Genre: Comedy, Drama
2017

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: Ingrid (Aubrey Plaza) moves to California and begins stalking an Instagram star (Elizabeth Olsen).

Review:

Tim: I read this glowing review of Ingrid Goes West, so I sat down excited to watch the movie. I didn't know anything about it, but it was soon obviously it was about a social media stalker- what a relevant, contemporary topic. I was really looking forward to the film. However, I was subjected to an agonizingly bad, awkward, insufferable movie. The film is thankfully only 1 hour, 38 minutes long and yet I was barely able to sit through it. I really hated this movie.

The biggest problem is that there's not a single person you can like in this film. They're all either psychotic, idiotic, vain, or annoying. And several characters have more than one of those characteristics. It was torture to watch a story about people I had no connection with and couldn't care less about. The film dips its toes into the waters of how each of these people got to be where they are, but it really needed to dive deeper. This is a film about broken people, but we don't truly get to understand how they got there. Sure, we learn just enough about each person, so we "understand" them if one event in their past led them to where they were today. This is a movie, though, that tries to tell us these characters are complex, while giving us simple explanations for why they are the way they are. "My mom died, I was lonely and lost, Batman provided me the stability I never had"- those all feel like part of the equation, yet we're told it's basically the whole deal. I hated all the characters and the movie didn't allow me to truly understand them.

The story itself isn't much better. I love the idea of tackling social media stalking- its a fascinating phenomenon. When you put your whole life out there for people to see, it makes sense that someone is going to feel like they "know" you. It's easy to turn that around and for the person to feel like there's a connection, when it's obviously a one-way thing. That topic should be addressed in the movies and I hope better ones try to tackle it. I'm trying to give this film some credit for trying to tell a story about it. However, writer/director Matt Spicer tells it in the most cringe-worthy manner possible. I'm all for creating awkward experiences on screen, but it happened so much here that it made the viewing experience exhausting. It killed any fun I could have had with the film. It feels like the characters jump from one awkward moment to the next. It takes us a long time to full appreciate the psychosis of the main character. The whole thing just felt like a muddled mess and it takes forever for the film to get anywhere. The pacing felt off, like the whole thing just dragged and dragged. And then there's a kidnapping scene, which was absurd but felt like the movie finally picked up some momentum- before slamming the breaks and returning to the same plodding pace. The end of the movie was pretty decent, but it a dark and twisty way.

Aubrey Plaza probably gave a good performance, but her character was just so out of it and unlikable. I suppose she gets some credit, although she didn't make me care for her character in the least. Elizabeth Olsen was decent, but again, plays her character as just so unlikable. Still, acting was decent. O'Shea Jackson Jr. was probably the closest we got to a sympathetic character. His performance was solid. I'm not convinced he's a great actor, but he did fine. Wyatt Russell pops up yet again, gives the same caliber of performance he usually does. He was fine.

Maybe I've aged out of the primary demographic for this film (a possibility I'm hyper aware of as I move through my mid-30s), but it's not like I feel totally disconnected from many films. I can usually put myself in the right context to appreciate it. I couldn't do that here. I think Ingrid Goes West might have been a slightly ambitious movie by tackling a dark and seldom explored topic, but it butchers the execution. I really, really disliked this movie a lot.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 3.5



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