One Day, I'll Just Disappear

 Movies Watched (since last entry): We're All Going To The World's Fair

October 9th, 2026

Earlier today, I wrote about the transcendent Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma and decided I'd keep that ball rolling by watching and writing about We're All Going To The World's Fair since I hadn't seen it.

I'm having trouble finding a proper starting point to writing about the film (we'll use Fair as short hand, it's a long title. Y'know what, let's also agree to Miasma and Glow for the other films, won't we?), especially since I want to avoid spoiling too much (I fear I may have revealed too much about Miasma), but I'll do my best...but it's probably better if you see the film first. Sometimes that doesn't matter, but in this case, I think it does.

Fair is a really excellent debut effort from a talented filmmaker, and I make specific note of "debut" (there is another film out there under Schoenbrun's dead name) because it is warranted here. There are techniques used that feel a little like they were better on paper than on screen, but that can largely be chalked up to it being an early attempt. Specifically, there's a tad too much walking, and some shots are held a tad longer than they should be, but the philosophy behind them is certainly solid (they are admittedly dislocating and disorienting, and provide instability), but on screen they also don't keep the viewer as focused as they maybe should be. But those things aren't even really ineffective, they just could be a few seconds shorter? I dunno.

Overall, my experience with the film was a positive one. Fair gets its juice from uncertainty, creating a premise whose depth is almost immediately clear to the viewer, and then twists and turns it, making you doubt your original perceptions of what, exactly, is really going on throughout. Themes and metaphors and allegories you began certain of start to become questionable, as you become half-convinced the film is about something else, a characters motivation is something else, and that uncertainty drives along a very quiet, very subdued narrative.

The film's best weapon is star Anna Cobb(in her feature film debut), who manages to engender sympathy, warmth, concern, and finally a sense of panic in the viewer as she goes deeper and deeper into the existential hole she falls into when she attempts to assuage her loneliness by playing an online horror MMORPG in which she invites a strange power to transform her. 

Told largely through webcam footage uploaded to the internet with occasional third person view (shot handheld, creating a drifting, imbalanced feel that fits extremely well) and footage of empty parking lots and nonspecific landscapes (making it seem like the story is literally taking place anywhere snow is possible, which is smartly utilized as a small plot point, which is a nice touch), the film occasionally drags as much as watching youtube does, but it still manages to be paced well, and draws the viewer into the insomniac-like hypnosis of the chronically online world.

Like Casey herself, we feel as if we are sleepwalking through a half-real world, separated from human contact all while being dependent on it for the same human contact. In that, the film very much feels like a post-covid fever dream, a thesis on the various ways we all can find ourselves lonely and alone, and the faustian bargains we'll enter just to feel better, if even for a moment, and maybe, just maybe, we'll be lucky enough to stumble onto someone who cares. 

As fantastic as the film's ideas are, it remains a very grounded, thoughtful, and occasionally moving piece of depression cinema.

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The film itself doesn't directly offer such resources, as I thought for a moment it might, but whenever self harm is depicted in a film, it is best to always end this kind of writing with resources, so if you are having troubling thoughts of self-harm, please reach out to someone, or dial 988.