Googling Derealisation

We’re all Going to the World’s Fair (2021) Dir. Jane Schoenbrun

A lonely teenager, Casey, takes part in a viral online role-playing horror game called the “World’s Fair Challenge”.

“Hey guys, Casey here. Welcome to my channel. Today I’m going to be taking the World’s Fair Challenge.” - Casey

An evolution of the found footage sub-genre started to emerge in the 2010s as horror started to reckon with the internet. Screenlife films - in which the film takes place entirely on a computer screen - began to appear and eventually hit the mainstream with Unfriended and Host (both of which I’d enthusiastically recommend if you’ve not seen them). This new sub-genre invited you to watch a story unfold across multiple tabs of an internet browser or through facetime/zoom/skype calls. Audiences stopped questioning why someone was still “filming” (in this case: looking at their screen). The question was redundant now. Of course they’re still in front of their screens. We’re addicted too. We get it.

But I’d argue no other director (bar one exception - see below) really gets the internet in the way that writer/director Jane Schoenbrun gets the internet. In another director’s hands, this premise could easily have played out as a cautionary screenlife film with an unambiguous, supernatural entity stalking the protagonist after she joins the “game”.

Instead we get something much more beguiling, frustrating (complimentary), and thought-provoking. This film stayed with me for weeks afterwards. It burrows under your skin and stays there.

We’re all Going to the World’s Fair has no time for screenlife formal constraints. It casually bounces between screen life and real life as easily as we all do ourselves. This allows for some bracing moments of offline reality to confront us, and for the sublime Alex G soundtrack to come in instead of relying on diegetic music.

The film indulges in the creepypasta horror of the premise - and successfully delivers plenty of visually unsettling moments - but it’s mostly interested in exploring bigger ideas about our relationship to the internet. 

Performance is a big part of this. Is Casey genuinely starting to change as a result of the Fair? Or is she convincing herself? Is it all an act? At what point do we manage to draw a line between whether we are expressing ourselves online or performing ourselves? Is there a difference? If there is, do we recognise it ourselves?

There are kids who watch YouTube videos of other children playing and ask their own parents to tell “them” what they’re playing with. “Them” being the watching audience. They don’t know the difference between reality and being at the World’s Fair. To believe that the version of us that is online is not us - or a part of us - because it’s on a screen is to be, at this point, willfully naive. At a certain point, we have to accept the distinction is meaningless. We’re all transhumans.

Kids don’t get to vote until they’re 18 because they aren’t considered adults who can make an informed decision, but they are introduced to screens and apps at an early age that are built on addictive casino technology that can shape and alter the way their brains work. We’re not going to the World’s Fair. It is inside us already.

The introduction of JLB (an older man with an unhealthy obsession with Casey’s videos) allows the film to explore the para-social relationships we build online. The internet can be a wonderful place to nurture relationships and find communities but it can be treacherous too. Who are we really talking to and can we trust their intentions? If we’re performing a version of ourselves, what version of us are they responding to? What version of them are we engaging with? What boundaries do we draw and when? These are all questions we don’t but should be asking ourselves all the time.

But I don’t want to suggest that We’re all Going… is in any way a negative portrayal of the internet. It’s not. If anything it presents most of this matter of factly, with no judgement. This is not some finger-wagging “what if phones but too much” horror. When Casey falls asleep to the soothing tones of an ASMR video, there’s a sort of transcendent, soothing beauty there too.

The ending is particularly effective. Cutting us off from Casey’s life when she stops uploading videos. Making us feel the parasocial emptiness ourselves. JLB’s concluding missive could be a real story or the fictions of a deluded, sad man. 

“I swear, someday soon, I am just gonna disappear, and you won't have any idea what happened to me.” - Casey

Where can I watch it in the UK?

You can stream it for free on Shudder.

Pairs well with

The other director who truly understands the horror and beauty of the internet is Bo Burnham. A man who has really been inside the belly of the beast from Day One. Patient Zero of performing online. Eighth Grade (2018, dir. Bo Burnham, available to rent for £2.49 on Google/YouTube) is a horror film and you can’t convince me otherwise. On the face of it, it’s a coming-of-age drama about an awkward teenage girl but it’s about so much more. Kayla, like Casey, is navigating all the horrors of teenage life alongside a desire to present something better, more aspirational, to the internet. She has little to no viewership but she performs a more confident, put together version of herself nonetheless. It’s a touching, heartbreaking and anxiety-ridden watch and it’s one of my favourite films of the past decade.

While we’re at it, you may as well pop Inside (2021, dir. Bo Burnham, available to stream for free on Netflix) on as well. Burnham’s lockdown comedy special is dark and terrifying and a lot of the themes explored in We’re all Going… and Eighth Grade are expertly pieced apart here. An existential crisis as a musical.

Further Reading

• A great Q&A with writer/director Jane Schoenbrun and actor Anna Cobb.
• Another good interview with Schoenbrun at Anomaly Film Fest.
• If you’ve not watched Inside and are on the fence, watch this and tell me it’s not a horror film.
• An excellent video essay on Burnham’s Inside, Eighth Grade and his history with the internet from Comedy Without Errors.
• CJ the X has a brilliant, wide-ranging video about AI, the internet, performance, our digital souls, Bo Burnham, and much more. Essential viewing.

Other Recommendations

• Have you read any Grady Hendrix? His smart, pulpy, Point Horror meets King books have always been reliably good. I’d recommend starting with My Best Friend’s Exorcism. The film adaptation is a bit of a disappointment but it does star Elsie Fisher from Eighth Grade (and Piz from Veronica Mars).