We're All Going to the World's Fair

One of the year’s most refreshingly unusual films, We’re All Going To The World’s Fair follows teenager Casey (Anna Cobb) as she is attempting to take part in the World’s Fair Challenge, an online gaming experience with an occult twist in which participants must complete certain tasks before gaining admittance. In the course of this, she is approached and befriended by a much older gamer (Michael J. Rogers) going by the name JLB.

As the film progresses, filmed in a style reminiscent of that of recent online-horror films such as Unfriended (Levan Gabriadze, 2014) or lockdown hit Host (Rob Savage, 2020), it becomes a character study of its lead’s loneliness and isolation, her anhedonia lifted only by these disjointed online interactions even as her motivations and intent, and those of JLB, fall into ambiguity in this unnerving film.