Tropic Sprockets / Ingrid Goes West

By Ian Brockway

“Ingrid Goes West,” a feature debut from director Matt Spicer, is the perfect blend of comedy and horror. The film highlights the perils of our smartphone society with a nod to the psychological thrillers of Patricia Highsmith. You will cringe as much as laugh. Like “A Clockwork Orange” the film has an eerie, haunting quality that stays with you.

Ingrid (Aubrey Plaza) has just been released from a stay in a mental hospital. She is obsessed with Instagram and Twitter. One day, she breezes through an Elle magazine and catches sight of an article announcing a new “It Girl,”Taylor (Elizabeth Olsen), and she is hooked. Ingrid decides to follow this avatar on Instagram and rents an apartment next to hers, using an inheritance. On her phone, she sees Taylor’s little dog and resolves to steal it as a plan to ingratiate herself with Taylor and become her friend.

The scheme works.

After politely refusing reward money, Ingrid gets invited to dinner and a friendship begins with Ingrid going everywhere with the socialite Taylor.

The film shines in small telling details. Ingrid studies photos and copies body language. She takes images of Taylor’s toiletry products, her accessories, perfumes and the books she reads. In this way, Ingrid is very much like Tom Ripley from Highsmith’s famous book.

Wonderful too is the manner in which the film handles the people surrounding Ingrid. Taylor’s beefcake brother Nicky (Billy Magnuson) is a selfish and arrogant narcissist. Taylor’s husband Erza (Wyatt O’Keefe) is a sluggish painter and Ingrid’s superintendent Dan (O’Shea Jackson, Jr.) is obsessed with Batman. Each character has his or her own fixation.

The core of the film is Aubrey Plaza who is riveting in the role, running the full gambit of emotions, with no action off limits. She is at once vicious and vulnerable, charming and carnivorous and completely entrancing. In every scene, Plaza commands your attention and it is nearly impossible to look away. Though very much a playful chimera, there are more than a few moments where Ingrid will have you deeply unsettled.

This is a film that teases you under the supposed genre of comedy. Like Alex in the aforementioned Kubrick classic, this is a portrait of a fetishistic and obsessive person, (an iPhone seldom leaves Ingrid’s side) who is at ease with danger. Both films pose questions of what it means to be disturbed  in a violent and increasingly frenetic culture.

“Ingrid Goes West” is an offbeat, yet subtly affecting film with plenty of genuine shock edging into the obvious titters.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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