We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is an intimate coming-of-age horror film

Jane Schoenbrun’s *We’re All Going to the World’s Fair* arrives at a moment when the line between our physical and digital selves has never been more porous. The film, which premiered at Sundance in 2021, captures something essential about the early 2020s: the way a teenager’s bedroom becomes a stage, a confessional, and a cage all at once. The protagonist’s participation in a viral horror challenge is less about the challenge itself than about the desperate need to be seen—even if that seeing is mediated through a webcam and a chat window. Schoenbrun understands that the internet doesn’t just reflect our anxieties; it gives them a language and a feedback loop. What makes the film so effective is its refusal to resolve its central ambiguity. Is the protagonist actually transforming, or is she performing transformation for an audience that may not even be watching? In an era of deepfakes, AI avatars, and algorithmic curation, that question feels more urgent than ever. The film’s horror is not supernatural but existential: the fear that the self we present online is the only self that matters, and that the "real" version is slowly being overwritten. Schoenbrun’s lo-fi aesthetic—grainy webcam footage, glitchy transitions, ambient drone—mirrors the texture of digital life, where authenticity is always just out of frame. The film also serves as a time capsule of a specific internet culture: the Tumblr-era creepypasta and ARG communities where young people found belonging in shared dread. Schoenbrun treats these spaces with genuine tenderness, even as they expose their dangers. The result is a coming-of-age story that feels both hyper-specific and universal—a reminder that horror has always been a vehicle for exploring the anxieties of growing up, and that the internet has simply given those anxieties a new, infinitely mirrored surface. As Schoenbrun’s follow-up *Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma* continues to draw attention, revisiting *World’s Fair* offers a clear through-line in their work: an ongoing investigation of how we construct ourselves in the digital mirror, and what happens when the reflection starts staring back. Source: [The Verge review](https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/983177/jane-schoenbrun-were-all-going-to-the-worlds-fair-horror-movie-review)