'INGRID GOES WEST'.........I TWEET.....THEREFORE I AM......

Ingrid Goes West (2017)   No, we didn't crib the title of this post from a plaque sitting on Trump's night table......

             We do think it nicely sums up this unsettling little movie's all-out assault on the plague of social media that now infects the entire globe.....

               Aubrey Plaza, who we think of as the Audrey Hepburn from an alternate Dark Universe, finally found her quintessential role, a part the embodies her entire acting schtick.....the bottomless well of sarcasm combined with a titanium-strength self obsession........

               Saucer-eyed and surface adorable, she's the flipped, inside-out hellish version of the Manic Pixie Dreamgirl.  This is one pixie no one in their right mind wants to go near.......

               Plaza's Ingrid Thorburn, an empty vessel psychopath who vainly searches for love, friendship and identity on social media, at first seems like a screenwriter's satirical construct.......the worst case version of millions of people who've abandoned real life to embrace a cyber-life, a existence lived only on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

               It's a credit to Plaza's fearless attack on the role that she breathes life and pathos into this character, which could have easily been played for either cheap laughs or cheap thrills.

               Ingrid emerges uncured from a court-ordered stay in a psychiatric hospital and through false pretense, manages to ingratiate herself with Taylor (Elizabeth Olson) a supremely self-absorbed Internet pseudo-celebrity, a celebrant of her own lifestyle.

               Portrayed by Olson with the same sly skills as Plaza, her 'Taylor' is like a dumber, talentless Gwyneth Paltrow, living out a warped, exaggerated life strictly with tweets and Instagram photos,

               Minus the psychosis, Taylor's every bit as empty and vapid as Ingrid, which poor Ingrid takes a long time to finally figure out.

                The filmmakers and their two top-of-their-game actresses aren't afraid to make all this darkly funny and uncomfortable to watch, while they artfully avoid taking it into "Single White Female" thriller territory.

                To us, the film comes closer to an up-to-the-minute tongue in cheek version of "The Talented Mister Ripley."  It even includes its own fractured version of Philip Seymour Hoffman's 'Freddy Miles' character with the arrival of Taylor's equally egoistic brother Nicky (Billy Magnussen).  Snarky, drug-fueled and odious beyond description, he has no trouble seeing through Ingrid, which touches off the deliberately mocked melodrama that leads to her undoing.

                Ultimately this movie seems way, way too satisfied with its abrupt resolution for Ingrid.
We imagine they meant it as a suitably ironic kick-in-the-teeth twist, one last raised middle finger to the entire social media universe. (And in that regard, we guess it's okay)

                But given the depths to which Aubrey Plaza plunged into this character, we expected far more than the skimpy, inevitable and obvious finale provided here......a milder variation of the "Taxi Driver" wrapup for Robert DeNiro.

                 Nevertheless....Plaza persists......for her bold, can't-avert-your-eyes performance, we'll post 3 "Likes" (***) and throw in a "#GoAubreyGo too.