Ingrid Goes West Review (2017, directed by Matt Spicer)

Ingrid Goes West is the first feature from director Matt Spicer, who plays it relatively safe here in terms of directorial style and instead lets the film’s well-written script and actors do the heavy lifting.

The main one doing the lifting here is clearly star Aubrey Plaza, who plays a mentally ill woman named Ingrid that becomes obsessed with people she follows on Instagram and starts stalking them. She gives a great performance and presents a very 3-dimensional character. She doesn’t go over the top and manages to avoid becoming a caricature as many actors do when portraying someone with mental illness.

Plaza shows plenty of range and while her character does lots of awful things to people, she somehow manages to not lose the audience’s sympathy and still feel like a real human being. She’s amusing in her awkward moments and compelling in her dramatic ones.

Usually, movies like this don’t tell the story from the perspective of the crazed stalker, so it’s a nice change of pace. Most filmmakers would probably center the story on Elizabeth Olsen’s character, as she plays the target of Ingrid’s fascination. Olsen is good enough here, but her character doesn’t really give her that much of a chance to show her talents.

The plot manages to avoid being too formulaic and yet events still don’t ever feel contrived. Spicer also weaves in social commentary without being heavy-handed and effectively satirizes social media as well as Los Angeles culture.

In addition, Ingrid Goes West depicts cell phone use in a very realistic manner that eschews the visual gimmicks that movies so often use.


In conclusion, I give this movie an 8 out of 10. It’s worth a watch, but isn’t necessarily essential and probably won’t be one of the best of the year or anything like that.

Ingrid Goes West has an 87% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average score of 7.2 out of 10. The low budget film has made around $2.5 million at the box office as of now.

I’d also like to mention that at my screening there was a short film attached at the beginning called Hi Stranger. It’s a bizarre, surreal animated work that achieves being cute and touching in very short runtime.

I really appreciate when they put shorts before a feature as it can expose these sometimes hard to discover works to a broader audience.