Delayed Reaction: We're All Going to the World's Fair

Premise: A teenager takes a spooky internet challenge and documents the effects it has on her while an interested third party attempts to help.

 

Yes. Finally, a found footage Sundance horror movie. Much of my excitement about this year's Sundance being online was for the Midnight movies. Those are the extreme horror, comedy, or violent movies. I figured, with Sundance being all about the independent (see: cheap) movies, I was good for at least one found footage horror movie. It only took me 44 movies to get to it.

There isn't much new ground to traverse with found footage, but We're All Going to the World's Fair makes a go at it. It begins with a teen girl, Casey (Anna Cobb), taking something called the "World's Fair Challenge". It's a creepypasta ritual in which she recites a couple things and gives a couple drops of blood [to her computer, I guess], then weird things are supposed to happen to her. The movie continues with more videos she posts in which weird things do start happening. It also shows other videos of people reporting odd symptoms from the challenge. Things get real when a concerned stranger decides to try and help her before it's too late.

 

Creepypasta is underexplored in horror at this point. It's a phenomenon still for people slightly under the movie-making age. I'm sure if I was a decade younger, I'd've had a creepypasta phase. For those unfamiliar with the term, creepypasta refers to scary stories that internet users attempt to make look real. It's often a community effort, like Slenderman. Hundreds of people latched onto the Slenderman story so that now there's a collection of videos and stories about Slenderman from otherwise unconnected sources. It's possible for an unsuspecting person to stumble onto Slenderman videos now and think it's real until a quick Wikipedia search reveals that it's a community myth. The World's Fair Challenge is another one of these. Artifice is built into the film. I know none of it is real since I'm watching a horror movie, but within the movie, how much of it is real? The movie lets the audience decide for themselves for much of the movie.

 

The movie isn't wholly effective. The business with the third party is a bust by the end that takes all the fun out of it. In fact, the last 5 or so minutes should just be wiped from the movie if the first focus is to be a scary movie. Perhaps I'm desensitized, but I thought this could gone a lot more nuts. Really, my only complaint other than the end is that I wanted even more.

 

On a filmmaking level the movie looked good. The found-footage rules were clear. Anna Cobb held my attention well, despite doing every scene alone. This all looks just like what I could find down a YouTube rabbit hole. I even think there's room to explore this idea further. Franchise?

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend