We’ve reached the doldrums of August, where studios release the titles not marketable enough for the summer movie season and not quality enough for serious award consideration. That means an odd mixture of horror films, formerly prestigious movies that have lost a little bit of their luster, and absolute junk just looking for a few screens to dominate for a couple of weeks. Oh, and what do you know? That perfectly describes this weekend’s new releases! Gee!
As far as the rest of this summer movie season is concerned, Ingrid Goes West is my most anticipated film (sorry, Spidey). Aubrey Plaza continues her totally unreal tour of pop culture insanity (see also: Legion) in the latest trailer for the Sundance favorite — a social media parable in which Plaza plays a self-destructive, Instagram-obsessed young woman who seeks validation through likes, which she confuses for legit human love…you know, like all of us.
“A stalker movie for the social media era” — that’s how our editor-in-chief Matt Singer described Ingrid Goes West in his review from the Sundance film festival back in January. That idea is only somewhat insinuated in this tightly edited (and tightly wound) red band teaser for the upcoming film, starring Aubrey Plaza and Elizabeth Olsen in what might also be described as a modern cautionary tale for millennials with smart phones grafted to their hands.
I have a young daughter, and I love sharing pictures and videos of her antics on social media. Occasionally people who follow me online will tell me in person how much they love my baby or how happy I seem with her. And I am. But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows; I just don’t share the moments where she wakes the whole house up at 4AM or has diaper rash so bad that she screams for 10 minutes straight. The line bteween reality and fiction online can get very blurry — and sometimes the persona we create there is much more appealing than the real thing.