Late on a cold night somewhere in the U.S., teenage Casey sits alone in her attic bedroom, scrolling the internet under the glow-in-the-dark stars and black-light posters that blanket the ceiling. She has finally decided to take the World's Fair Challenge, an online role-playing horror game, and embrace the uncertainty it promises. After the initiation, she documents the changes that may or may not be happening to her, adding her experiences to the shuffle of online clips ava... (Full plot summary below)
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Late on a cold night somewhere in the U.S., teenage Casey sits alone in her attic bedroom, scrolling the internet under the glow-in-the-dark stars and black-light posters that blanket the ceiling. She has finally decided to take the World's Fair Challenge, an online role-playing horror game, and embrace the uncertainty it promises. After the initiation, she documents the changes that may or may not be happening to her, adding her experiences to the shuffle of online clips available for the world to see. As she begins to lose herself between dream and reality, a mysterious figure reaches out, claiming to see something special in her uploads.
Leave your thoughts about We're All Going to the World's Fair.
| Los Angeles TimesCarlos AguilarSchoenbrun, a native speaker of the language of the internet, has uploaded into the cinematic landscape one of the most thoughtful depictions of self-discovery in the digital age. Through Casey’s plight of suburban isolation, the artist reaches out to us from a corner of the web’s endless abyss with an unmissable invitation, quite literally demonstrating the transcendental prowess of storytelling. |
| The AtlanticDavid SimsBy framing her characters’ inventiveness with boldly bizarre imagery, Schoenbrun is getting at what makes internet horror such a unique mode of cinema. The viewer is unsettled not just by the content, but by their ambiguous relationship to who’s sharing it. |
| LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenNo matter where the film leaves us narratively, however, its evocation of estrangement—even, perhaps especially, as part of an Internet where we can talk to anyone at anytime—is both emotionally palpable and cinematically potent. |
| PolygonJoshua RiveraWe’re All Going to the World’s Fair isn’t just a movie about connecting, it’s about becoming. It’s a powerful acknowledgement of how confounding and frightening young adulthood can be. But it’s also a film about hope. |
| The PlaylistChristian GallichioWhile a bit too opaque near the end, and perhaps not the horror show that one might expect, it’s nevertheless an impressive debut. |
| The Hollywood ReporterJourdain SearlesCobb’s face is a canvas for a world of yearning that can’t fully be revealed to us because she doesn’t have the language to articulate it yet. That truth allows the film to feel both specific and universal at the same time. |
| Slant MagazineMark HansonThroughout, Jane Schoenbrun reveals themself to be adroitly plugged into both the current technological and sociological landscape. |
| IGNSiddhant AdlakhaWe’re All Going to the World’s Fair is a moody, slow-burn horror drama about loneliness online. |
| Austin ChronicleJosh KupeckiA standard setup for a horror film, but filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun (who, among other projects, was ringleader/executive producer for the equally slippery SXSW 2016 feature collective:unconscious) has not made a horror film, but a fractured portrait of teenage malaise, of deceptions (both of self and others), and of the awkward probing of a cocoon’s inner shell. |
| Screen RantAlexander HarrisonIntelligently crafted and delicately performed, We're All Going to the World's Fair is fundamentally a portrait of loneliness, and explores how discovering an online community can alleviate, or exacerbate, a person's feelings of isolation. |
