Rating: 8/10
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Related films: Life after Beth, The Anti-Social Network
By Leanne Harragan
After the death of her mother and a list of problems facing her, Ingrid Thorburn ups and moves West to find LA socialite Taylor Sloane, Ingrid’s Instagram fixation. They quickly become ‘best’ friends, but when cracks begin to show in both their lives, problems arise.
Odeon weren’t showing this (typical) so we went to Vue and despite being only 10 minutes late; the film was already in full swing. We didn’t miss much (I learnt after the film when I quickly checked the plot) and it didn’t stop us from understanding what was happening. I was really excited for this one, I’m a big fan of Aubrey Plaza, I think she’s very funny. After watching I wasn’t really sure how I felt, I wasn’t disappointed but I wasn’t blown away. Thinking about it almost a week on, I realise that it will be a great cultural film in years to come, it captures a moment in time and hits close to home being part of a generation that feel lost without their phones.
The cast of this film were ace; Aubrey Plaza (Ingrid) has the perfect mix of comedy and intensity needed for this stalker role. Elizabeth Olsen was also wonderful playing Socialite Taylor, making her money by posting about places and how amazing they are on her Instagram. One final mention for acting goes to O’Shea Jackson Jr playing Dan Pinto, Ingrid’s landlord who turns out to be one of the most important people she’d meet in L.A.
I think this film works because it has a current mix of slang and relatable social media moments. They were moments when I was laughing out loud and moments were I was cringing, knowing full well that I had done the exact same things before. When the sudden friendship between these two girls falls apart; there are some deep moments and some comical consequences. Some parts of the film covered just how fake social media can be and how no matter how good your life looks online, who knows how much of that is real.
The only thing that let this film down for me was that it came extremely close to sending out a message about the dangers of social media; envy, disillusionment and stalking but in the final scene it cops out.
Rating : 7/10
By Rebecca Mannick
‘Ingrid Goes West’ is one of the stranger films I’ve seen this year. I was very excited to see it due to it being specially catered to someone of my generation. Well to be honest, I knew it was a film about Instagram and it has Elizabeth Olsen in it so I was pretty much sold. It ended up being slightly darker than just a film about Instagram. It essentially shows the dark side of social media and what happens when you let your online perception becomes your whole life. Which can be okay in some situations, but not when you are portraying a lie and doing it for the wrong reasons.
I didn’t enjoy that most of the characters in this film were quite unlikable. Even the main character Ingrid (Aubrey Plaza) you find its quite annoying. Her main quest is to become friends with well-known instagrammer Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen) and at first you kind of want her to succeed in becoming friends. But once you dive deeper into Taylor’s life and the people around her, you realise how shallow and fake they all are. They are painted as people who share their ‘perfect’ life on social media but have massive voids in their real lives, they are not immune to human problems like everyone else.
The whole movie has a satire vibe around it and one of personal favourite moments was when Taylor’s husband Ezra, was talking so emotionally about his artwork. How it was a new era for him, something that he was completely passionate about. The painting literally just said ‘#SquadGoals’. Hilarious.
It was definitely a very relevant film for 2017 and it was filled with references that teens and twenty-somethings would be able to understand which I enjoyed a lot. I enjoyed the location too - Los Angeles looked so amazing, they also featured Joshua Tree a lot too which also looked very instagrammable haha!
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