We’re All Going To The World’s Fair
Directed by Jane Schoenbrun

Things have been a little slow around here lately, I’ve missed out on some big movies that came out, ones that I even enjoyed, and I am planning to talk about Nope and The Black Phone, but I’ve been extremely busy with life and stuff. Seeing as Spooktober is almost upon us, I’m going to get back into the swing of things by talking about a new movie that was recently added to HBOMax, We’re All Going To The World’s Fair. All the drama going on with HBOMax aside, there are some quality original horror movies up there, like The Empty Man, which you should see before it gets removed in a few days, so I was hoping this would be another good addition to their library and was looking forward to this coming out. Has it lived up to that hope? Let’s get into it!

Like me, I assume none of you have heard of this movie or know what the plot is, so I’ll try to be descriptive without spoiling too much. The story here follows Casey, an isolated teenager living with her father in the middle of nowhere. Casey becomes involved with a community of people on an unnamed video-sharing site who all make videos about the urban legend of the World’s Fair, which is that you watch a mysterious video, say “We’re All Going To The World’s Fair”, and prick your finger. After that, you’re supposed to change in some unspecified way. Without giving too much away, Casey makes a video participating in this challenge, and her life begins to change.

With that bare-bones summary your thoughts are probably headed in a specific direction, especially given the type of movies I’m drawn to, but We’re All Going To The World’s Fair was one of the most surprising movies I’ve seen recently, taking things in a far different direction than I anticipated. World’s Fair teeters on the edge of being an art film, with long shots, minimal dialogue, and atmosphere in lieu of lengthy character interactions. This isn’t a criticism, as the understated nature of World’s Fair is one of the best things about it, this is a small-scale, personal film that moves deliberately and expects you to be into it. Whether or not you will be into World’s Fair depends almost entirely on how that last sentence sounds to you. If you think that sounds boring then there probably isn’t much more I need to say about it, but if that’s intriguing, then there is a bit more to this.

One of my favorite things about World’s Fair is how well it understands the modern horror scene. When talking about horror and horror fans in the past, like in Scream, it was always through the lens of horror movies, but World’s Fair tackles something completely different, a newfangled collective storytelling community, like the Scary Story subreddits, the SCP Foundation, and even the Slenderman mythos, and this was such a cool thing for me because I’m into those communities and this feels like an authentic adaptation of this trend. That’s not just from the story but from the natural and off performances from Anna Cobb and Michael J. Rogers, who are the perfect weird lonely folk that a lot of internet people are. Special mention to Anna Cobb, who did great in her debut performance!

I’d also be remiss to not mention how much I loved the score, which is an original composition that hits the same weird awkward vibes as The Greasy Strangler score but without being quite so weird. Like a lot of smaller movies, We’re All Going To The World’s Fair has a lot of limitations, but those limitations have been cleverly worked into the story. “We only have a house in a small town in the middle of nowhere with one character? Guess that’s what the movie is about!” In a lot of ways, I admire the work that director Jane Schoenbrun more than I love World’s Fair, but I really respect their work and for the right person this is a great movie. I don’t know if I would generally recommend We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, but if you’re in the mood for a slower, deliberately paced character piece that focuses on an online horror community, then this is the movie for you!