Movie Review : Ingrid Goes West

I guess as someone who has dealt with mental health issues for quite some time, I get drawn more into movies like England is Mine or the one I just saw a few days ago : Ingrid Goes West.

The premise of Ingrid Goes West is simple : Ingrid is a loner with some serious issues who finds solace in her use of the social media app : Instagram. But things get out of hands when she shows a behavior closer to stalking and obsessing when she discovers Elizabeth Olsen's character Taylor Sloane, the typical California girl you see a lot on Instagram who takes pictures of stuff...and gets paid for it building a large following or people wanting to be just like her... and then everything goes quite...west.

I have to say this movie was unsettling for me, it is a critical  message about what apps and social medias can do to us. And in some parts I definitively agree with what the movie tries to convey. Like Ingrid I wanted to be someone else, and when the "celebrities" you follow on Instagram promote a product, a part of my mind always thinks "Maybe I should buy it".
This always reminds of the song by Marina & The Diamonds "Sex yeah" :  "Question what the tv tells you, question what the pop star sells you."

I think anyone who uses social media has to be careful. I had the chance to discover most of it along my late teenager years, but now anyone from any age starting from 13 ('technically') is on social media. It's as much part of our life as eating.

Now what rubbed me the wrong way was how the 'theme' of the movie was handled. Instead of focusing on Ingrid's deteriorating mental health, we are left with a one sided conversation : She's addicted to instagram and can't stop. The app is destroying her life. Everything is pointing at the app being the cause of her mental health and this is where I disagree.

What about Ingrid ? The main character, the girl who lost her mother, the woman who had to go through a mental health facility care alone... well, we never really get close to know what really goes on in her mind because the movie tries so hard to say "Social media is the cause of all this!" with its finger pointed at Instagram in particular, that we never really focus on what she actually goes through. 

Sure the app enhances an already unbalanced behavior , but the movie tries so hard to say "This is all because of the app!!!!" that it doesn't stop to think that maybe...just maybe the app is just the trigger. Because I believe that with or without social media, Ingrid's issues would still be there. She went through the loss of her own mother that she says was like her "best friend", even without any social media, there would still be a lot of pain and hardship.But I do believe that Instagram ,in her case, enhanced her need to not feel alone anymore and since she is a very awkward girl, it only leads her to imagine that the app is the answer to everything, lifting all of her problems away.

Now don't get me wrong ,this movie was enjoyable, it had solid performances (if not over the top from Plaza with crazy looks that honestly would never work in real life) and it definitively invites you to have a discussion about social medias and how they impact our behaviors, no matter where we are from in the world, but I think it misses the point at times.

I've been like Ingrid, a lonely kid who barely had any friends and seeked refuge into this incredibly appealing digital world, and I got lucky I never went into this dark road, if anything I've had for the last 10 years some decent experience with any social medias I've been on , but this movie can show you how easy it is to fall into the rabbit hole of obsessions and very unhealthy behaviors (on both Ingrid and Taylor's side) . It's just a shame that the movie focuses so much on the app it tries to denounce that it never quite manages to make a decent portrait of someone dealing with mental health issues like it should have and that is why I give it...

Thanks for reading another movie review ! I'm really enjoying writing about these movies and I hope you do too ! I'm seeing Thor Ragnarok tomorrow so I'll try to get a nice little review in during the week end or next week !