Ingrid Goes West review

Matt Spicer’s bitter comedy of the absurd follows Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza, deadpan but with a manic edge), a depressed twentysomething who inherits $60,000 from her mother and uses the money to move to California, inspired by Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen), an Instagram influencer she read about in Elle. Taylor’s bio is a sincere string of platitudes: “Treasure hunter. Castle builder. Proud Angeleno.” Ingrid pilfers tips on how to curate the right kind of cool from Taylor’s social media feeds and it’s not long before the young women become “BEST friends”, shopping for artisanal lamps and alternating margaritas with lines of cocaine in Joshua Tree, and things start to turn a little Single White Female. O’Shea Jackson Jr (Straight Outta Compton) also shows up as Ingrid’s landlord, Dan, a Batman-obsessed stoner screenwriter, whose sweetness tempers some of the film’s corrosive satire. Spicer smartly skewers millennial cliches with hilarious, pointed jabs at avocado toast, Joan Didion and feeling “hashtag blessed”, which might have some audience members squirming in their seats. The film is very sharp on how young women use social media as self-actualisation, to create intimacy, and to bolster feelings of connection, as well as Instagram’s addictive, toxic qualities.