Ingrid Goes West

Year 13, Day 332 - 11/28/21 - Movie #3,985

BEFORE: I'm back from Thanksgiving, after a 7-hour drive that's really only supposed to be about 4 hours long. I think the problem was that we left on Saturday so we'd beat the Sunday holiday return traffic, and probably a lot of other people had that same idea.  It's kind of like how "everybody" travels to Thanksgiving on Wednesday, but then many people travel on Tuesday to avoid the Wednesday traffic, so Tuesday gets crowded too. Then some people try to beat the Tuesday traffic by traveling on Monday, and at that point you might as well take the whole week off, just to make your traveling easier. 

We drove up to Massachusetts on Tuesday, stopped at the casino in Connecticut for lunch, and then settled in at my parents' house - they moved to an assisted living facility a couple months ago, which started really enforcing the strict visitation rules for the holidays. We're not out of this pandemic yet, of course. My father called me when we were 90% of the way there, and told us not to come because he didn't think we'd be able to visit and share a meal with them.  I had no connections with the staff of the facility, so I texted my sister and she investigated - the rules stated that if we visited my parents, we had to keep our masks on, and we could NOT share a meal with them.  We could, however, drop off a meal for them, but in that case, we could not visit with them for any length of time, to prevent us sharing the meal and thus engaging in an activity which would require removing our masks. 

SO, we worked around the rules - on Wednesday, after picking up the holiday meal package at the local grocery, and adding some extras like butter, milk and a cake, we went to visit my parents without bringing food.  Then on Thursday, we brought them two turkey dinner plates, plus a plate of apple pie and cake, but we didn't stay to eat with them, we went back to the house and called them on Zoom.  Friday, we visited them again without food and brought them their printer from the house and connected it to their laptop. This way we got to do everything we wanted with them and delivered Thanksgiving dinner without violating any of the visitation rules. That's the best we could hope for this holiday - better than last year but still not back to normal. 

Billy Magnussen AND Meredith Hagner carry over from "The Oath". 

THE PLOT: An unhinged social media stalker moves to L.A. and ingratiates herself into the life of an Instagram star. 

AFTER: This film sort of fits in with this month's collection of sociopaths and miscellaneous weirdos - right in line with characters seen in "The Goldfinch", "The Killing of a Sacred Deer", "Birth", "Horse Girl", and of course "My Friend Dahmer".  There's also a connection to yesterday's film, which touched on the effects of social media with regards to news and political opinions - today's film demonstrates the possible results when someone is too deep into Instagram or Facebook, to the point where they're only satisfied when they get the "proper" number of likes or replies or retweets or whatever, and they become depressed and withdrawn when they don't.  

I'm prepared to say this is POSSIBLE, because we've accidentally created this society that has become driven by the social media, instead of the other way around.  We're supposed to be the humans in charge, running our accounts, but in some ways, aren't they maybe running US?  I'm guilty of this myself to some degree, I'm happy when my blog posts get a few dozen hits, and when they only get a few, I wonder what went wrong. But then if I should happen to get a couple HUNDRED hits, I also wonder what went wrong - did my BFF with many more followers than me re-tweet my tweet?  If not, that probably means that some Slovakian web-site is re-posting my content, I couldn't possibly earn 300 hits on my own merits!  

When we first see Ingrid, we catch the tail-end of her relationship with somebody named Charlotte, and it ends badly, with Ingrid crashing her wedding and spraying the bride with mace.  What possibly could have led to this?  Ah, it's an online relationship gone horribly wrong, and then Ingrid spends time in a recovery facility, learning about boundaries and perhaps better ways to react when somebody online leaves a nasty comment on one of her posts.  But soon after being granted her release, Ingrid realizes that everybody in her small Pennsylvania town knows about the incident and her incarceration and her time spent in the mental ward, so she decides to take the money she inherited from her mother's will and start fresh somewhere else. 

But, where to go, with a wide world out there and a bag full of cash?  Unfortunately, Ingrid's new direction looks a lot like the old one, she sees a magazine article about a new Instagram "influencer" named Taylor Sloane, who lives in Venice Beach, California and appears to lead an idyllic life with her husband, cute dog and a whole bunch of trendy fashionable clothing while frequenting a bunch of farm-to-table cafes that serve avocado toast. Ingrid makes her way across the country, rents an apartment in Venice and starts frequenting the same cafés and hair salons as Taylor, hoping to run into her, but always one step behind, obviously.  

Eventually she does encounter Taylor, only she's too nervous to approach directly - she's already built up Taylor in her mind as an ideal human, and she needs an ice-breaker.  So, naturally she follows Taylor home, kidnaps her dog and waits for a reward notice to be posted.  This is not a recommended way to find one's new best friend, of course - but Taylor and her artist husband, Ezra, are very grateful to have their dog returned and invite Ingrid to stay for dinner. Before long Ingrid and Taylor are hanging out frequently, and then petty jealousy rears its ugly head when Taylor prefers the company of Ezra, or her visiting brother, or another rival potential female friend.  

Of course, Ingrid could just roll with the punches, let the friendship develop naturally, understand this process takes time - but of course she can't do that, it's all about getting more photos and hashtags NOW to make more posts and get more likes and really, it's a vicious cycle that represents a form of addiction.  Ingrid may not even realize WHY she's resorting to more desperate behavior, or mistreating one friend to get closer to another, or breaking promises to her landlord, then manipulating him to become her boyfriend, just to maintain the back-story that she's told to Taylor.  What's that old quote about the vicious web that we weave, once we've started to deceive?  Yeah, that. 

Ingrid butts heads with Taylor's brother, Nicky, who's a recovering addict and a manipulator himself (it takes one to know one) and that's the start of Ingrid's undoing, to maintain the relationship with Taylor she's got to get Nicky out of the way, she'd probably even kill him if she could get away with it.  One problem here, though, is that even when she's exposed and the friendship she so desired is damaged, she never really pays the price for her stalker activity, she's ultimately rewarded in a way, and narratively speaking, that may be a problem.  How will she ever learn where the social media limits are - how will any of us ever learn what they are, if there are no consequences for improper behavior?  

Also starring Aubrey Plaza (last seen in "Playing It Cool"), Elizabeth Olsen (last seen in "Liberal Arts"), O'Shea Jackson Jr. (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Wyatt Russell (last seen in "The Woman in the Window"), Pom Klementieff (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Hannah Utt, Joseph Breen, Angelica Amor, Charlie Wright, Dennis Atlas, Luis Deveze, Jason Weingarten.

RATING: 5 out of 10 emojis