Ingrid (Aubrey Plaza) is obsessed with social media. So much so that she has just been released from a psychiatric ward following an incident where she pepper sprayed an Instagram influencer at her wedding. Failing to learn her lesson she immediately begins to obsess over another influencer called Taylor (Elizabeth Olsen) and heads west to Los Angeles to find her. 

Ingrid uses Taylor’s posts to give herself a makeover in her style before beginning to frequent the places she sees in her posts. Slowly and surreptitiously she finagles her way into Taylor’s life and becomes friends with her and her husband Ezra (Wyatt Russell). That is until Taylor’s drug addict brother Nicky (Billy Magnussen) and another influencer named Harley (Pom Klementieff) complicate matters by the fact that Taylor prioritises them over Ingrid. But Ingrid has no qualms using her landlord Dan’s (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) kindness against him to help get what she wants. 

Ingrid Goes West is a wickedly clever dark comedy about how the majority of us now live our lives. The manner in which influencers force us to constantly compare what we have with others, how that breeds loneliness and competitiveness and that ultimately it is a hollow pursuit. 

The script is sharp, the humour cutting and the social commentary absolutely on point. The fact that I have arrived at this film eight years since release and it is still a brilliant reflection of our doomscrolling obsession is perhaps only more worrying. 

The cast are wonderful, with no less than four of them now part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which perhaps says something about the state of the move industry as well. 

Aubrey Plaza and Elizabeth Olsen are amazing at playing the vapid women whose lives are about how they present themselves to others and measured in followers. The fact that they both come across sympathetically in their own ways is a testament to their acting. Whilst Wyatt Russell’s character has seemingly given up raging against the machine and has resorted to drinking his worries away. He represents the older generation’s outlook on social media but has his own poisons. In their roles Billy Magnussen and Pom Klementieff then just add more chaos to the extremes that people will go to for money and adoration. 

Ingrid Goes West is a little gem of a comedy waiting to be discovered by you.