Film Fridays: “Ingrid Goes West” at the Southside

Formerly Movie Mondays, LOCAL invites you to check out Film Fridays, a weekly write-up on a new movie playing over the weekend.

Social media is weird. The people who become obsessed with it are often weirder; few films have explored the subject in an interesting way, but Ingrid Goes West does so, mostly through the hilariously deadpan performance of Aubrey Plaza.

Ingrid Goes West boldly announces the arrival of its director, Matt Spicer, with this being his debut. The film is something of a Cinderella story, giving Spicer—a little-known filmmaker who had only made a few shorts up until that point—the chance to work with an amazing cast after his script for Ingrid was enthusiastically picked up by Plaza (who, aside from playing the title role, is credited as a producer).

The film became a breakout hit at Sundance earlier this year and was quickly picked up by NEON films, a fairly new distribution company that’s already built up a strong reputation with films like Colossal and The Bad Batch.

Ingrid Goes West chronicles the obsessive Ingrid Thorburn (Plaza) as she literally follows one of her Instagram-famous idols (Elizabeth Olsen) and inserts herself into the social media star’s life. Centered around strong performances from Plaza, Olsen, and O’Shea Jackson Jr., Ingrid Goes West is a darkly smirking film that uses the backdrop of LA to explore the rabbit-hole of faux-perfection social media often presents.

The film has multiple showings at the Southside Works Cinema and will be playing through the week.