We're All Going to the World's Fair
Short description
Casey is a teenage girl who spends her nights alone in her attic bedroom, scrolling through the internet and eventually deciding to take part in an online horror role-playing game known as the World's Fair Challenge. The game asks players to record themselves and document whatever changes the experience brings them, and Casey begins posting videos of her own participation. As the line between what is real and what she imagines starts to blur, a mysterious stranger reaches out through her uploads, claiming to see something unusual in what she has shared.
The film was directed and written by Jane Schoenbrun and produced by Carlos Zozaya and Sarah Winshall. It is Schoenbrun's first feature, followed by I Saw the TV Glow in 2024 and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma in 2026. Anna Cobb plays Casey, with Michael J Rogers as JLB, May Leitz as Rebecca, Theo Anthony, Valeria Santiago and Turner Greaves in supporting roles. It runs 86 minutes and was released in April 2022.
Reception split sharply between critics and audiences. Critics gave it 7.4 out of 10 across 124 reviews, while viewers were far less enthusiastic: 5.4 out of 10 on IMDb from around 8,700 votes and 5.5 out of 10 on TMDB from 172 votes. That gap suggests a film that reviewers found more rewarding than general audiences did, with its slow, ambiguous approach to online life and teenage isolation appealing more to critics than to casual viewers.
What's left behind the scenes
- Director and screenwriter Jane Schoenbrun recounted in one interview how she filmed New Year's Eve in New York with a handheld camera. She and her companion had planned their arrival in the city in advance to begin filming exactly at midnight. This idea came to Schoenbrun during a visit to the town of Saugerties in New York state, when she went to the central square at the moment New Year's began. In this scene, she wanted to convey how a person remains alone despite being surrounded by others. No one notices him, no one speaks to him. This loneliness became a key characteristic of Casey, a role played by Anna Victoria Cobb. According to Schoenbrun, she often met young people who, like Cobb's character, felt lonely even in a crowd.
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