We're All Going To The World's Fair Review: An Intelligent Internet Horror

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When working with limited resources, filmmakers can either treat that as an obstacle to overcome — whether by maximizing budget enough that viewers don't notice, or flashing enough talent that viewers don't care — or as a guiding principle. Some movies, like Searching or The Blair Witch Project, succeed in part because they accept their limitations and tell a story that doesn't feel like it could've been better told with more money behind it. We're All Going to the World's Fair, the fiction-feature debut of writer-director Jane Schoenbrun, is the latest entry into this canon. Since its debut at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, it has been referred to as the first creepypasta horror movie, though whether one experiences it as horror is very much a matter of perspective. Intelligently crafted and delicately performed, We're All Going to the World's Fair is fundamentally a portrait of loneliness, and explores how discovering an online community can alleviate, or exacerbate, a person's feelings of isolation.

The film opens with teenager Casey (Anna Cobb) filming her initiation ritual for the World's Fair Challenge, supposedly the internet's scariest role-playing game. After repeating a phrase three times, pricking her finger and smearing blood across her computer screen, and watching a specific video, she has invited in a malevolent force that will begin to change her, and she is meant to document these changes in a series of YouTube videos. She watches a few uploads from other players and sees them mention a loss of feeling in their bodies, so she starts there. She films a confessional in the snowy woods outside her home without a jacket, claiming not to notice the cold. When she starts to feel discouraged about playing