The Aubrey Plaza Dramedy With Elizabeth Olsen You Can Find On Hulu
For a blessedly short year or two, FOMO became the watchword of the young American experience. The Fear Of Missing Out overtook the realization that You Only Live Once as Millennials' chief source of concern. As a result, a generation of hip, youthful party animals scrolled through untold millions of Instagram photos, searching for cosmopolitan events and lifestyles that were theoretically being held just outside of arm's reach. At least, that's what we were told. Some of us were at home trying to beat "Cuphead." In the indie dramedy "Ingrid Goes West," director Matt Spicer took things one step further by presenting a new genre of terror: FOFOMO, or the Fear Of Fear Of Missing Out. The movie takes a purportedly demographic-spanning predilection for covetousness and ratchets it right up.
Aubrey Plaza plays Ingrid, a young woman whose worldview is more or less summed up when she crashes a wedding and maces the bride — Ingrid wasn't invited to the wedding, y'see, and the fact that she wasn't particularly close to the people getting married doesn't change the fact that they were clearly wrong to leave her out. After a brief #institutionalization, Ingrid finds a new repository for her obsessive tendencies when social media influencer Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen) — get this — replies to one of her comments online. Taking this as all the evidence she needs that it's time to go make a new best friend, Ingrid goes on a journey of self reinvention, moving to Taylor's neighborhood and changing everything about herself to blend in and, you know, stealing Taylor's dog and other friendship-building stuff.
Ingrid Goes West goes dark
What begins as a perfectly healthy stalking/social espionage operation soon becomes something a little bit weird. Ingrid's attempts to juggle obsession and life-consuming dishonesty begin to catch up with her, and her already ever-so-slightly imbalanced responses grow to accommodate new and unsavory developments. Kidnapping may or may not come into play. The sum of the parts of "Ingrid Goes West" is essentially a modern "The Great Gatsby" but with a marked uptick in 'Gramability and more pronounced personality disorders; one of the factors given for its "R" rating is "disturbing behavior," which is as apt as it is unsettlingly vague.
The film was #blessed with outstanding reviews when it premiered at Sundance in 2017, with glowing praise heaped on the performances of Aubrey Plaza and Elizabeth Olsen. Skim through its reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, where it currently holds a Certified Fresh 86% critics score, and put a quarter in a jar every time that you see the word "relevant" pop up. Soon, you'll have enough money saved up to move to California and infiltrate Elizabeth Olsen's social circle. Or, if you'd prefer, you could use the money to pay for a subscription to Hulu, where "Ingrid Goes West" is currently streaming. Either way, chase your bliss.