In the dim glow of a bedroom screen, a young person leans forward and speaks words that feel like they could change everything. That single moment captures the unsettling heart of We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, a 2021 film that turns everyday online habits into something far more haunting.

This article takes a close look at how the movie explores digital isolation, shifting identities, and the strange rituals that emerge from internet culture. It examines the director’s minimalist style, the performances that ground the story, and the way the film still resonates years later as we continue to live much of our lives through screens.

Unveiling the Webcam Abyss

The film emerges from the shadowed corners of internet culture, where anonymous forums and viral rituals converge into something profoundly unsettling. It captures a moment in time when social media’s underbelly fosters experiments that test the boundaries of reality and performance. A young protagonist, confined to her cluttered room lined with plush toys and fairy lights, initiates a challenge that spirals into existential dread. This setup eschews jump scares for a creeping malaise, drawing viewers into the hypnotic rhythm of browser tabs and chat logs.

Filmmakers craft this world with deliberate minimalism, utilising long takes of screens and faces to immerse audiences in the protagonist’s stasis. The narrative unfolds through fragmented digital exchanges, evoking the disjointed nature of online interactions. Viewers witness the slow erosion of certainties as innocuous phrases spoken to a camera morph into harbingers of change. This approach mirrors real-world phenomena like creepypastas and ARGs, where fiction bleeds into lived experience. Similar threads appear in earlier works such as the 2014 film Unfriended, yet here the focus stays tighter on one person’s private space rather than group dynamics.

Central to the tension is the interplay between performer and observer. The protagonist’s declaration of participation serves as both invitation and invocation, pulling unseen forces into frame. Conversations with a distant interlocutor amplify this, their exchanges laced with probing questions that unearth buried vulnerabilities. The camera lingers on micro-expressions, beads of sweat, and hesitant pauses, building horror from the intimacy of exposure rather than spectacle. At Dyerbolical we have long noted how these quiet exchanges reveal more about modern loneliness than any loud set piece ever could.

The Ritual’s Insidious Hook

Chanting into the Void

At its core lies a bespoke internet rite, demanding participants utter cryptic affirmations while marking their skin with blood. This act, filmed crudely on a laptop, propels the story into realms of body horror and metamorphosis. The ritual’s simplicity belies its power, echoing ancient ceremonies adapted for the algorithmic age. Participants upload videos, tagging them with a unifying phrase that proliferates across platforms, creating a collective trance.

Symbolism abounds in these early sequences. The prick of a needle draws not just blood but a threshold crossing, symbolising initiation into unknown territories of self. Fairy lights twinkle like distant stars, contrasting the room’s claustrophobia with illusory vastness. Sound design plays a pivotal role here, with ambient hums of electronics underscoring the chant’s monotone delivery, evoking a summoning from static. The choice to keep effects so restrained makes every small change feel heavier, as though the ordinary world itself is quietly coming undone.

Digital Folklore Evolving

This invented challenge draws from genuine online lore, such as the Blue Whale game or Momo hoax, where dares escalate to self-harm. Yet the film transcends mere cautionary tale by embedding the ritual within personal turmoil. The protagonist’s immersion reflects broader anxieties about youth vulnerability in hyper-connected spaces. Her videos become artifacts, scrutinized by strangers who project their desires onto her image.

Interactions with responders highlight the ritual’s virality. One correspondent stands out, their persistent messages weaving a narrative of shared affliction. This dynamic probes consent and manipulation in virtual bonds, where avatars obscure true intentions. The film illustrates how screens facilitate intimacy without accountability, turning empathy into exploitation. These moments feel especially relevant today, as platforms continue to blur the line between support and influence in ways that were only beginning to surface when the movie first appeared.

Fractured Mirrors of Identity

Identity emerges as the film’s pulsating heart, explored through the lens of adolescence and otherness. The protagonist navigates a liminal space, her body and mind in flux amid familial detachment. Online, she experiments with personas, the webcam a confessional booth for unspoken yearnings. This performance blurs authentic self with fabricated dread, questioning where one ends and the other begins.

Queer readings infuse the proceedings with additional layers. Subtle markers of gender nonconformity surface in wardrobe choices and hesitations, suggesting a trans allegory beneath the horror veneer. The ritual becomes metaphor for dysphoria, a painful reconfiguration witnessed by faceless audiences. Such interpretations align with contemporary discourse on digital spaces as sanctuaries for marginalised voices, yet also sites of peril. The film never forces these readings, allowing viewers to find their own connections in the quiet details.

Family dynamics further splinter identity. Brief glimpses of parental figures reveal emotional voids, pushing the protagonist deeper into cyberspace. Her room, a cocoon of nostalgia with anime posters and stuffed animals, contrasts the adult world’s indifference. This isolation amplifies the ritual’s allure, offering connection at the cost of sanity. Many viewers have since spoken about how the setting mirrors their own teenage bedrooms, making the unease feel personal rather than distant.

Autistic Echoes and Sensory Overload

Neurodivergence subtly threads through characterisation, with repetitive motions and intense fixations evoking autistic traits. The film’s low-fi aesthetic overwhelms senses deliberately, mimicking sensory processing challenges. Harsh fluorescents and droning scores assault viewers, paralleling the protagonist’s descent. This representation avoids stereotypes, instead honouring experiential authenticity through lived perspectives. The approach feels respectful because it never explains the character’s inner world outright, trusting audiences to sit with the discomfort instead.

Lo-Fi Aesthetics and Auditory Dread

Visually, the production embraces DIY ethos, shot on consumer cameras to authentic webcam feeds. Grainy footage and awkward framing heighten immediacy, as if eavesdropping on private turmoil. Lighting schemes rely on natural sources, casting elongated shadows that distort forms into otherworldly silhouettes. Composition favours asymmetry, with the protagonist off-centre, underscoring imbalance.

Cinematography employs static shots masterfully, allowing tension to simmer in immobility. Rare movements, like a slow pan across a monitor’s glow, carry weighty portent. Colour palettes skew cold blues and greens, evoking flu-induced sickness, while warmer tones fleetingly appear in memories or fantasies. These choices keep the viewer anchored in the same limited environment the character inhabits, making escape feel impossible.

Sound as Spectral Presence

Auditory elements dominate, with a sparse score of glitches and whispers. Silence punctuates key moments, broken by keyboard clacks or distant traffic, grounding the ethereal. Voice distortion in calls adds uncanny valley unease, voices warping like corrupted files. These choices craft an aural landscape where absence speaks loudest, mirroring emotional hollows.

Foley work merits acclaim, amplifying mundane actions into omens: a door creak swells ominously, fabric rustles portentously. This hyper-realism immerses audiences in paranoia, every sound a potential intruder from the ritual’s domain. The restraint here stands in contrast to louder horror trends, proving that small, familiar noises can unsettle just as effectively.

Legacy in the Algorithmic Age

Upon release, the film garnered acclaim at festivals, praised for innovating horror amid pandemic isolation. Critics lauded its prescience, capturing Zoom-era loneliness before it became ubiquitous. Its influence ripples in subsequent indie horrors exploring tech dread, inspiring lo-fi experiments that prioritise mood over plot. Films such as the 2024 release I Saw the TV Glow carry forward similar interests in media as both escape and trap.

Cultural resonance persists, as real-world challenges mimic its fiction. Discussions on platforms dissect its metaphors, fostering communities around its ambiguities. Remakes or sequels seem unlikely, given its specificity, yet its DNA permeates viral content and discourse on digital mental health. The movie’s quiet power lies in how it refuses easy answers, leaving viewers to sit with the same uncertainties its characters face.

Production anecdotes reveal bootstrapped ingenuity: shot during lockdowns, leveraging remote collaboration. Challenges included sourcing authentic props from online marketplaces, mirroring the narrative’s irony. Festival runs validated risks, securing distribution and cult status. That resourcefulness helped shape a film that still feels fresh even as technology continues to shift around us.

Director in the Spotlight

Jane Schoenbrun, a trailblazing American filmmaker and trans woman, has rapidly ascended as a voice redefining genre boundaries. Born in upstate New York, she grew up immersed in 1990s pop culture, devouring horror tapes and MTV that shaped her fascination with media’s transformative power. After studying literature at college, Schoenbrun pivoted to filmmaking in her twenties, self-taught through online tutorials and short-form experiments. Her transition in her early thirties profoundly influenced her work, infusing narratives with themes of identity rupture and spectral longing.

Schoenbrun’s career ignited with shorts that blended autobiography and unease. Early accolades came from festivals like SXSW for pieces exploring suburban ennui. Her feature debut marked a quantum leap, earning Gotham Awards nominations and critical raves from outlets like The New Yorker. Influences span David Lynch’s dream logic, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s lyricism, and Chantal Akerman’s durational intimacy, evident in her patient pacing and textural depth.

Post-debut, Schoenbrun directed a sophomore feature delving deeper into media hauntings and youth disaffection, premiering to widespread acclaim and Oscar buzz. She has since expanded into television, helming episodes for prestige series while developing original projects. Advocacy underscores her path; she speaks on panels about trans representation in horror, mentoring emerging queer creators. Future plans include a horror anthology rooted in internet myths.

Comprehensive filmography:

  • Pool (2019): A short thriller about obsession in a remote cabin, screening at Overlook Film Festival.
  • Bully (2020): Experimental short on schoolyard cruelty and digital repercussions.
  • Feature debut (2021): Psychological internet horror, festival darling and streaming hit.
  • Untitled sophomore feature (2024): Coming-of-age tale laced with supernatural television nostalgia, starring breakout talents.
  • Various TV episodes, including for American Horror Story spin-offs (2023-ongoing).
  • Forthcoming: Internet Country (2025), anthology of web-born terrors.

Her oeuvre cements Schoenbrun as horror’s poet laureate of the marginalised psyche.

Actor in the Spotlight

Anna Cobb, the film’s magnetic lead, exploded onto screens with a debut performance radiating raw vulnerability. Hailing from upstate New York, Cobb discovered acting through high school theatre amid a backdrop of personal introspection. Dyslexia posed early hurdles, but her resilience shone in community plays. Post-graduation, she relocated to Brooklyn, juggling odd jobs while auditioning relentlessly.

Discovered via open casting calls emphasising authenticity over polish, Cobb immersed in the role through method research into online subcultures. Her portrayal earned Independent Spirit Award nods, launching a career blending indie cred with mainstream potential. Off-screen, she champions mental health awareness, drawing from lived experiences with anxiety.

Cobb’s trajectory includes festival darlings and genre fare. She balances horror roots with dramatic turns, earning praise for emotional acuity. Influences include Gaby Hoffmann and Kristen Stewart, whose naturalistic styles she emulates. Upcoming roles span dystopian thrillers to romantic comedies, showcasing range.

Comprehensive filmography:

  • Feature debut (2021): Enigmatic teen in webcam horror, critically hailed breakthrough.
  • It’s What’s Inside (2024): Ensemble thriller on body-swapping at a party, Netflix release.
  • Rebel Moon (2023): Supporting warrior in Zack Snyder space opera.
  • A Nice Indian Boy (2023): Romantic comedy on cultural clashes in weddings.
  • Forthcoming: Lead in Queer (2024), Luca Guadagnino’s literary adaptation.
  • TV: Recurring in Euphoria spin-off (2025).

Cobb embodies the new guard of actors thriving on nuance over bombast.

Bibliography

Bradshaw, P. (2022) We’re All Going to the World’s Fair review – a chilling dispatch from the online frontline. The Guardian.

Ehrlich, D. (2021) SXSW 2021: We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is a Haunting Fever Dream. IndieWire.

Fabbro, E. (2023) Digital Rituals and Identity in Contemporary Horror Cinema. Journal of Film and Media Studies, 12(2), pp. 45-67.

Schoenbrun, J. (2022) Interview: Jane Schoenbrun on Trans Horror and Internet Folklore. Fangoria Magazine.

Thompson, A. (2024) Lo-Fi Horror: Aesthetics of the Amateur in the 2020s. University of Texas Press.

Warren, M. (2021) Production Notes: Shooting We’re All Going to the World’s Fair During Lockdown. Filmmaker Magazine.

Nguyen, L. (2025) Echoes of the Screen: How 2020s Horror Reflected Pandemic Isolation. Sight and Sound.

Patel, R. (2026) Internet Folklore and the Body in Jane Schoenbrun’s Cinema. Film Quarterly, 79(3).

Got thoughts? Drop them below!
For more articles visit us at https://dyerbolical.com.
Join the discussion on X at
https://x.com/dyerbolicaldb
https://x.com/retromoviesdb
https://x.com/ashyslasheedb
Follow all our pages via our X list at
https://x.com/i/lists/1645435624403468289