ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

Female Film Critics 24/375

Jane Schoenbrun

Movie of the Week Reviews 

MOVIE OF THE WEEK April 11, 2022: WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR

Jennifer Merin , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Eerie and melancholy, Jane Schoenbrun’s horror-tinged drama We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is both a coming-of-age story and an examination of teens’ use of media and technology. It’s not always easy to watch, but it’s also very hard to look away as main character Casey (Anna Cobb) gets caught up in a creepy online role-playing game whose boundaries and impact are problematic at best and extremely dangerous at worst.

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Reviews 

WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR – Review by Jennifer Merin

Jennifer Merin , , , , ,

The horror-tinged minimalist psycho-drama. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, is a first narrative feature from writer/director/editor Jane Schoenbrun, whose commitment to personal, art-driven cinema is evident in this slow burner — in some ways a teenage navel gaze — about a girl named Casey whose life is lived on and for the Internet via a disturbingly disconnecting (and self-destructive) Internet game/community — the name of which is the films title — with which she is obsessed and to which she is very vulnerable.

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Reviews 

WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR – Review by Susan Wloszczyna

Susan Wloszczyna , , , ,

The Blair Witch Project meets Eighth Grade as writer, director, and editor Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is a sensitive though semi-creepy exploration of internet culture wrapped up in a coming-of-age tale that focuses on adolescent Casey (fab newcomer Anna Cobb), a shy girl in the boondocks who decides to take on the film’s titular on-line challenge in the middle of the night. When we first meet our young protagonist, she is alone save for her favorite stuffed monkey toy from her childhood during an eight-minute webcam shot as she faces her laptop screen on her desk amid her neon-lit attic bedroom. The movie relies on webcam perspective and smartphone shooting in many clever ways.

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Festivals Reviews 

WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR (Fantasia 2021) – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

Alexandra Heller-Nicholas , , , ,

Low-key, dark, and emphatically superb, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair flirts with the internet horror of films like the recent Zoom indie smash Host, but where that film stayed impressively loyal to its central formal conceit, Schoenbrun dazzles with this unrestrained foray well beyond the boundaries of any particular horror subgenre and into much more abstract terrain. Swirling around the plug hole of a digital abyss, we’re never sure what lies down the drain even after the film has ended, making it the rarest of gifts; a horror movie that becomes more disturbing the more you think about it, long after it has ended.

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Festivals Reviews 

WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR (Sundance2021) – Review by Pam Grady

Pam Grady , , ,

A teenage girl living a troubled life in the real world seeks community and adventure in the titular online role-playing game in writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s intriguing narrative feature debut. Ostensibly a horror movie in which a naïve kid immerses herself in a world that promises transformation, the real horror isn’t in the game but in the world the girl encounters whenever she leaves her bedroom.

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