We're All Going to the World's Fair

How this has a 91% on RT is beyond me. This is stupid. Ostensibly, this is a coming of age story about a teenager named Casey, who is depressed. She participates in an internet horror ARG called “I’m going to the World’s Fair”, where you do this challenge and then record more videos showing the changes you take on. The movie then is supposed to be about the changes she encounters, and someone else in the game trying to help her. Right away, the concept is a problem, because the movie wants to have it both ways. Is it just a game that she’s living up to a little too much? Or is there really something supernatural? The movie doesn’t say, but not in a way that’s enjoyable. Ambiguity can be fun, but this movie is too dumb to know how to do ambiguity. This isn’t leaving something up to the imagination. This is a movie that just doesn’t know HOW to say anything. And that leads to the second big problem: the movie’s rock-stupid approach to the coming of age element. It is as subtle as a fireworks display. The movie tries to use symbolism with all the grace of junior high poetry. The actress tries, by god, but this script cannot be redeemed. Porn movies have more subtlety and nuance in their scripts. The best example is when, with the lights mostly out in her room, she shreds her childhood stuffed animal, and when she turns on the light, she mourns what she’s done. GET IT? Darkness, light, growing up, refusing to grow up … SO SUBTLE. The last few minutes are literally an epilogue exposition dump, dispensing with all pretense and just vomiting words, another problem this movie has: telling and not showing. There’s a decent idea buried somewhere in this, but it needed … well … better everything. Ditch the stupid internet framework. Have a script that isn’t as dull as a tack hammer. Don’t be so on the nose. Have some damned energy in the movie. Other than lead actress Anna Cobb, this thing is a total snooze.