Confronting the Loneliness of the Internet Age: Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going To The World’s Fair

Link to the original Letterboxd review

“I know how it’s going to end now. I’m going inside the video, through the computer, into the screen.”

When approaching horror, one often assumes that it will be scary in overt ways, jumpscares, unsettling music, scary effects, and all that is true. Horror is often characterized by exploiting common fears, and bringing to light disturbing, otherwise taboo subjects. Horror often reveals intrinsic things about humanity, our penchant for storytelling, our common fears, universal truths, etc. But one thing that has become more and more prominent as the years go by, with the advent of the internet, and that is psychological horror and the creepypasta. Rather than focusing on material things, psychological horror seeks to exploit the mind, exploit fears without the use of monsters or gross things, rather ideas. Psychological horror films often focus on less overt things, such as atmosphere, tension, music, and exploiting dread to strike fear into the hearts of many. How does this relate to the creepypasta? It does in some small ways, most creepypastas, that is internet legends spread around in large copy paste text formats, are pretty bad. They often consist of common horror tropes and themes, that is gore, excessive violence, scary monsters, and general edgy material. But there are creepypastas that seek to provoke some kind of psychological reaction, be it through a more new trend called analogue horror, or more old fashioned youtube videos made by smaller channels with less than a thousand views and general creepy vibes. Youtube horror as an extension of the creepypasta has become its own thing, with notable ideas and concepts including Ben Drowned, Jeff the Killer, The Slender Man, and other subjects with a plethora of videos explaining or being about them. Youtube horror also includes challenges, typically extreme challenges characterized by near life threatening consequences, though some are tame, usually creative ventures that implore people to have fun and be creative. Circling back to film, the earliest psychological horror films, namely Cat People (1942) and even Psycho (1960) seek to disturb psychologically. A lot of horror films just inherently do that, even if they are gory excessively violent slashers. Horror’s main inherent element is atmosphere and fear of the unknown.

Horror has found its way into many different genres of film, be it a film like Shiva Baby (2020) with its score and anxiety inducing sequences, claustrophobic spatial relations and the likes, No Country For Old Men (2007) and its procedural pacing and general slowness, dreadful atmosphere, or any war film. When labeling a movie like We’re All Going To The World’s Fair (2021) horror, one would think it fits into the conventions of that genre, and for the most part it does, however it delightfully dabbles in a plethora of thematic content related to body horror and psychological horror. Jane Schoenbrun’s directorial debut follows a teenage girl named Casey as she participates in an online challenge known as the World’s Fair Challenge, a game similar to bloody mary where the participant chants the phrase “I want to go to the world’s fair” three times, pricks their finger, and smears the blood on their computer screen, then they watch a video comprised of flashing strobe lights and see if they notice changes. The challenge is very reminiscent of actual internet challenges, mainly ones that seek to exploit the creativity of the audience it cultivated. The movie starts off relatively conventionally, it misleads you into believing it will be a found footage film akin to Paranormal Activity (2007) or The Blair Witch Project (1999) by employing a long one take fully observing Casey as she prepares for the challenge and records a video doing it. It’s through this voyeuristic lens that we experience everything that occurs in the film, rather ambiguously too. But it isn’t strictly a horror movie, though it employs techniques familiar to the genre, it breaks free of that mold, mostly concerned with isolated character moments and scenes of our main character Casey as she descends into the deepest depths of the internet and her mind. It’s no secret the internet has bred a special kind of mentally ill generation of kids, constantly seeking validation in a world that so increasingly isolates them, losing all sense of self as technology rapidly accelerates making it hard to keep up, a system designed around exploiting dopamine like a slot machine. It’s no secret that the internet is nefarious in that way, that technology is both good and bad as a tool, that the internet has become a substitute for the third place that no longer exists. In a world where we are taught to suppress who we are, that we are sinful for even existing, for living our truth, it’s no wonder so many people have turned to the virtual spaces that inhabit the internet to find some sort of meaning in a world that has left them behind. Casey is despondent, just like me, just like a lot of people on the internet, she seeks human connection, a sense of belonging, so she does it through this challenge. She expresses herself creatively, just like everyone else does. The film showcases several players and their side effects, some narrate the dreams they’ve been having, one pulls ticket stubs out of his arms in an incredibly discomforting body horror scene, one claims he feels no pain and runs on a treadmill as he slaps himself, one claims their body has turned into plastic, and so on. We’re All Going To The World’s Fair (2021) portrays the internet in a very truthful light, a place full of creeps, weirdos, artists, and lonely people seeking comfort. It also portrays the very sinister nature of what the internet has become, a place dominated by tech monoliths seeking to exploit every crevice of it, every trend, every idea, everything, nothing is safe from their grasp now, not even you. Casey leads a double life through the internet and through this challenge, and the film treats it with this dissociative haze to it all. She goes about her days in a malaise, never truly present.

The internet is a place where we exist without bodies, without physical states of being, without the fears of being perceived, we can hide who we are, we can be who we are, we can exist, but we don’t need flesh to just be. The internet is the perfect place for queer people, more specifically teenagers, to just express themselves without the shame of being ridiculed and mocked by their peers. We’re All Going To The World’s Fair (2021) is completely about dysphoria, dissatisfaction, unease, and the likes. It’s also about isolation, about self immolation, and losing yourself in the vast wormhole that is the internet. Casey is probably a NEET if we’re being honest, she doesn’t really go anywhere throughout the film, she’s always stuck between the frame, in her house, with her single father who’s never really there, and she doesn’t get out much save for the occasional nature walk. There’s a specific scene towards the middle of the film where late at night she goes out of the house and into the shed and examines it, she finds a shotgun, and then goes into the projector room. We never really leave her perspective in the film save for the few glimpses into another person briefly in her life, and that’s what lends it to being so isolating. She’s truly alone, she never shares the frame with anyone, she’s always by herself, never emotionally responsive, always with a blank expression on her face. As the scene continues she turns on the projector and watches a video, we linger on her as she sits and watches, we hear what the video is, an ASMR video. It’s a video meant to lull the viewer to sleep. It’s tender, soft, intimate, and lonely. That sense of comfort, of serenity, is stripped away when the autoplay feature queues up a disturbing video directed towards Casey. The video features a still image of her face, liquified to look distorted and creepy, with words flashing, saying “YOU ARE IN TROUBLE” and “I NEED TO TALK TO YOU”. That’s another interesting thing in the film, the presence of autoplay. Autoplay as a feature is like autopilot really, it plays the next video in the queue of thousands of videos and doesn’t stop unless you turn it off. In a way it makes the film play out as a dream, with the transition being the autoplay arrows. Between videos we get this sort of breathing room to process as we move on to the next dream, or video. It’s here we are introduced to the film’s second, parallel subject, simply called JLB. JLB is this mysterious figure who seems to care deeply about Casey’s well being during the challenge. Mind you the film later reveals JLB is an equally lonely middle aged man, who just so happens to take interest in Casey, rather suspiciously, but his motives are never really revealed. It’s all left up to ambiguity. JLB is this ambivalent figure, the two never meet, they call, they know how each other sound, with JLB knowing how Casey looks, but Casey never really knows how JLB looks. There’s a phrase that I heard somewhere that says that you never really know who’s behind the screen, and to some extent that’s true. The internet has bred a special kind of anonymity, intentions and motivations are all anonymous, you only really are who you present yourself to be. In a sense the internet is a stage and you are the performer. And that’s another facet this film touches on, performance on the internet. How does Casey know that JLB is who he says he is? She doesn’t. How does JLB know that Casey is who she says she is? He doesn’t. How does Casey know she is who she says she is? She doesn’t. The internet fractures a person into leading a double life, never truly knowing who they really are. None of you know who I really am, you only know who I present myself to be, and that’s standard throughout the internet. Casey only knows a facet of who she really is. This relationship between JLB and Casey is uneasy as they both don’t really know each other and their motives. JLB, like Casey, watches other people’s World’s Fair videos. In equally voyeuristic ways the film showcases Casey and JLB watching the videos, but we never really see the videos that often, we just see them watching the videos.

Casey’s experience with identity is not unique, but rather a shared experience. This annihilation of the self in favor of performing as someone who you are not, trying to break out of your prison, your fleshy temple that makes people perceive you in one way. The film offers a short glimpse into this reality that feels incredibly tangible…because it is. The internet reveals a part of us that exists beyond the confines of our physical being, a part of us that completely immolates when faced with the truth, the sad truth that human connection is lost. Casey represents a very queer existence, an existence filled with self destruction and pleasing a faceless mass of people that don’t exist, that don’t truly understand who you really are. The reality is this is the kind of movie that has you googling depersonalization or derealization, and realizing that the internet and existence is its own out of body experience. Casey is like me. And that’s what made me emotionally connect with it on the first watch, is that she’s me. And I don’t mean the “literally me” archetype, I mean she is me, she’s everyone who uses the internet as a queer teen. Casey is trans on a surface level, baggy clothes, difficulty with parents, ambiguous name, but she’s also trans on a much deeper level. Recall that I mentioned immolation and self destruction and pleasing a faceless mass of people, that is what existing as a trans person in society is to some extent. There’s a disconnect between my identity, who I am, and who I present myself to be. Casey, in a very disturbing scene, is seen covered by UV paint, as she approaches the camera she rips apart her stuffed animal Poe, who she has had since she was a newborn. Not only does she physically destroy the stuffed animal but she destroys a part of herself, a part of the whole. There’s another scene, a dance scene, Casey records herself dancing. Then she screams, a shrill scream. And then she snaps back and continues dancing. It’s another quiet but effective moment in a film full of them.

We’re All Going To The World’s Fair’s World’s Fair is most obviously a metaphor for perception. Artistic recognition, but also just recognition. It is a ride that once admitted on you never want to get off. We’re all in the World’s Fair. Growing up as a child of the internet makes the scenes where characters grasp their computers hoping to find human connection hit that much harder. Finding solace in strangers who don’t even really know who you are, who are older, who are younger, who are everything. Needing to connect with others so badly you just want to be sucked into the screen. But that’s all it is. A screen. A screen that separates you from you. A screen that separates the physical from the metaphysical. Schoenbrun employs incredibly simple techniques that amount to an incredibly eerie and intense, powerful, complex, emotional atmosphere that feels disconnected on purpose. This is a film about collective dysphoria. This is so obviously a film about dysphoria. This is a film about comfort. This is a film shaped by identity, fractured identity. And it’s so heartbreaking and relatable.

We’re all going to the world’s fair.