Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair reflects upon the collective Millennial and Gen-Z experience growing up with largely unmonitored access to the internet. The 2021 Sundance nominee features only three actors, starring Anna Cobb in her debut role as Casey, an evidently neglected teenager living somewhere in what appears to be the northeastern United States. In her attic bedroom, Casey is participating in an online role-playing horror game, a trend made popular by YouTube creepypastas, among others. Part of the appeal of Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, or MMORPGs, is that they always draw a mix of equally engaged skeptics and believers.
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In order to begin the “World’s Fair Challenge,” players must execute and document an initiation ritual, which involves pricking one’s finger to draw blood and repeating a chant. Then, players document the supernatural “symptoms” they begin to experience upon completing the ritual. In watching the videos that Casey is viewing, we see that these symptoms gradually become more dramatic until the players eventually reach their final destination: the vague and mysterious “World’s Fair.”
Casey, who is being watched and guided by an older man who claims to be concerned for her wellbeing, expresses frustration about how her symptoms are different — that she herself is different. At first, it is unclear whether there is anything insidious taking place. This somewhat ambiguous horror coming-of-age film thoughtfully portrays teenage loneliness and the painful desperation to explore one’s place in the world. Due to its ambiguous nature, fans may be confused about the events that unfold during the film.
Imagination and Isolation at the World’s Fair
Utopia
For younger audience members, the premise of We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is painfully familiar, evoking feelings of both nostalgia and sadness on behalf of our troubled yet unwary teenage selves. We are meant to both cringe at and empathize with Casey as she documents her falsified symptoms with poorly edited videos of herself smearing goop on her face, screaming unexpectedly, and destroying a beloved stuffed animal (and regretting it almost immediately). As highlighted by Schoenbrun’s artistry, an active imagination in combination with teenage boredom, uncertain identity, and parental neglect is generally not a very stable recipe.
Because we are so narrowly focused on Casey’s perspective, it becomes difficult to distinguish whether the symptoms are actually occurring; our reality becomes warped as hers does. However, one will notice that there is little evidence to support any paranormal activity. We see Casey almost willing something to happen to her, desperate to connect with her online peers and audience. This backfires, causing her to feel more isolated than she already is. When she discovers to her frustration that she is not actually experiencing anything, she compensates by acting, hence the goop. The destruction of her stuffed monkey, which she usually takes with her everywhere, is a moment of difficult realization for her.
The Internet and We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair captures the zeitgeist of our digital days, expressing what it’s like to spend nearly all our lives connected to phones and computers. There has been a recently reignited trend toward found footage horror which almost exclusively uses webcams, cell phones, text messages, and other digital mediums to tell their stories. These are called ‘screenlife’ films, but unlike most of those, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair truly feels like it belongs in the digital ether, like it has a screenlife of its own.
As David Sims writes in The Atlantic, “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair feels like a weird piece of internet ephemera one might accidentally discover while browsing late at night. The film will resonate with anyone who’s gone down a macabre digital rabbit hole and discovered something as mild as one too many grim Wikipedia articles, or as robustly unsettling as “creepypasta,” a storytelling subgenre that functions as the folk-horror corner of the web.”
Schoenbrun’s film is an authentic representation of that liminal internet space where the horror feels genuine but ambiguous all the same. It’s like a much more assured version of the great horror ARG videos on YouTube, celebrated by Night Mind and other content creators — Everymanhybrid, Marble Hornets, The West Records, and AlanTutorial.
Transgender Allegories at the World’s Fair
Although not overt, the vague yet dark horror atmosphere that Jane Schoenbrun establishes is reminiscent of gender dysphoria, which is something many teens struggle with. Gender dysphoria is the experience of discomfort in one’s own body in relation to assigned birth sex versus gender identity. Due to a lack of societal acceptance, people who experience gender dysphoria internalize transphobia and repress their true identity, which causes emotional distress. Teenagers in general are already at a psychological point in their lives in which they are trying to understand and develop their own identities. For many closeted teens with agender or transgender experiences (many of whom have not yet garnered self-acceptance) these growing pains are excruciating.
When someone doesn’t feel comfortable in one’s own body, they may rely upon self-destructive habits to cope, just as Casey does to cope with her isolation. Aware of it or not, Casey may also be referencing gender dysphoria when she is frustrated about feeling “different” from other participants after the ritual takes place. The detail of the prominent question mark on Casey’s wall, a motif seen throughout the picture, lends itself to this idea.
This sense of dysphoria is especially reflected in the scene in which Casey receives JLB’s initial message; she finds herself staring at a distorted image of herself, as though she is staring into a strange mirror. Schoenbrun, who is nonbinary, provides palpable insight into what gender dysphoria feels like: confusing, frustrating, and isolating.
The Significance of the Setting
The wintry rolling hills, bare deciduous trees, the shots of a small downtown scene, and a brief flash of a navy-and-yellow license plate suggests the story is set somewhere in Upstate New York, which consists largely of countryside and very small towns. Casey’s setting is already alienating, setting the tone and theme of isolation. However, most of the film takes place in Casey’s attic bedroom and on the internet. Alex G’s moody original sountrack tops off the melancholic ambience.
Everything about We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is deliberate. Teenagers, who are experiencing the discomfort of adolescence both socially and physically, tend to withdraw. This is emphasized by the fact that Casey’s world revolves around her investment in the World’s Fair Challenge; she is participating in escapism. We hardly see her outside her bedroom, and when she is outside, she is filming for her YouTube channel.
Her isolation is enhanced further by the fact that she lives in the attic, a room typically designated for old, discarded items that don’t really belong anywhere else. Pointedly, we never see her father, the only other household member whose only off-screen line was to rudely shout at Casey to keep it down. The only characters besides Casey with acting credits are a woman in a YouTube video (Holly Ann Frink) and JLB (Michael J. Rogers), who in Casey’s world only exists through her screen.
A Horrific Coming of Age
The attention to the story’s setting is clever and thoughtful. In developing this setting, Schoenbrun cultivates a beautiful balance within their film; the internet is Casey’s safe space, but it is also an unhealthy coping mechanism for her isolation and discomfort. Physically alienated, Casey seeks and finds connections with people through the World’s Fair Challenge. She feels an inherent connection between them and herself because they are all involved in the challenge together.
That being said, her engagement with the internet presents threats to her safety. She begins to make vague threats to her own life under the guise of presenting symptoms of the World’s Fair Challenge. At this point, one can almost safely assume that the challenge really is just an MMORPG, but there is some truth in Casey’s cry for help, which is answered by the opportunistic JLB. This presents another danger; he is an older man who, though his intentions are never entirely transparent, is utilizing common grooming tactics to gain Casey’s trust.
Described as a horror film, this coming-of-age story beautifully and intentionally portrays growing pains through the plight of the modern teenager, exploring isolation and connectedness as well as confusion and frustration surrounding identity and belonging. The inclusion of ASMR in congruence with the overarching theme, the soundtrack, and overall environment come together to create a powerful sensory viewing experience that is less about horror and more about self-exploration and understanding. Sims eloquently continues in his Atlantic piece:
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair might as well have crawled out of one of those creepypasta-filled forums, where users swap eerily plausible fictions […] By framing her characters’ inventiveness with boldly bizarre imagery, Schoenbrun is getting at what makes internet horror such a unique mode of cinema. The viewer is unsettled not just by the content, but by their ambiguous relationship to who’s sharing it. That parasocial relationship is evident in so much online interaction, and the audience’s wavering connection to Casey is what keeps We’re All Going to the World’s Fair captivating all the way to its cryptic end.
