We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2022)

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Posted By: brian@brianschell.com January 3, 2023

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Too much of it is cringe and boredom rather than entertainment. There is a sort of story that we can slowly figure out. And some horror. But we Horror Guys didn’t care for it at all.

Synopsis

Casey sits in her room at the computer. “Hey guys, Casey here,” she rehearses for the camera. “Today I’ll be taking the World’s Fair Challenge.” Then she makes her bed and cleans the room, because no one wants to watch a live streamer with a messy room.

Eventually, she starts up the camera and does her show. She repeats, “I want to go to the world’s fair,” three times. Neither Bloody Mary nor Beetlejuice shows up, but she does stick herself with a pin to get some blood. Then she watches a video that strobes her face with color. “That was the World’s Fair Challenge, and thanks for watching. I’ll post an update if I start to notice any changes.” She then signs off. Credits roll.

There’s a video explaining all you have to do to get started with the greatest game ever: take the World’s Fair Challenge. She watches another video from a guy who says he thinks he is changing inside. The whole World’s Fair thing seems to be an Internet sensation. There’s a video of a man on a treadmill slapping himself and another with a music video where a girl turns to plastic.

Casey is a horror fan, and she took the challenge because she thought it would be fun to live in one. She tells the audience about her childhood nightmares. They’ve returned since the WFC.

That night, she records herself sleeping but gets bored and goes out for a night walk instead. She goes to their locked barn and opens up a gun case to look at the gun inside, which she promptly puts away again. She watches a go-to-sleep hypnosis video. There’s a video message from JLB showing Casey’s face getting all distorted, followed by the message, “You are in trouble. I need to talk to you.”

JLB warns that playing the game changes you. He wants to help her; he doesn’t like what she talked about in her latest video. She thinks there’s something happening inside her; she’s turning bad. She watches a video from a guy who picks off pieces of his arm and pulls out a string of tickets!

Casey records a video of her dancing and singing, somewhat cringey, but not ridiculously bad. Then she ends the video with her screaming.

Casey’s videos get more and more unhinged. Is she losing her mind, or is she just becoming a better influencer? She disembowels and dismembers her childhood stuffed toy. Then she comes back into the room and wonders what happened to her stuffed monkey.

She says she knows how it’s going to end; she’s going to inside the screen, inside the computer, inside the video. JLB tries to tell her that this is all just a game; none of it’s real. He’s getting worried about her videos. She laughs at him and says she knows that it’s all pretend. She tells him to get lost and never call her again. He begs her not to do it, to keep making videos. She won’t answer his calls.

“Someday soon, I am going to just disappear, and you won’t have any idea what happened to me.” And then she does.

JLB explains that a year later, Casey contacted him to apologize. She had been in a hospital for most of that time, but is doing much better now. She and JLB meet face to face, but she would never tell him what actually happened to her that night.

Commentary

There are many scenes of Casey messing with her computer and doing really mundane things. It’s a commentary on social media, influencers, TikTok, memes, and internet challenges, but it’s not much fun to watch. The theme of the film has something to do with people living in an Internet echo chamber and getting obsessed with online stuff.

I’ve seen this compared to “Skinamarink” several times, but the only real similarity is that nothing happens and they’re both really boring. To be fair, this isn’t anywhere near as boring as that film (not much could be that bad), but it’s giving it a good try.

It didn’t really make much sense, it was overly long, and Kevin and I both agree that we hated it tremendously.