We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is an intimate coming-of-age horror film

With director Jane Schoenbrun's newest project drawing fresh attention, now is an ideal moment to revisit their 2021 debut feature — a quiet, unsettling coming-of-age story about a lonely teenager drawn into an online horror ritual that blurs the line between digital myth and psychological reality.

Jane Schoenbrun's debut feature film follows Casey, a solitary young woman who participates in something called the World's Fair Challenge — an internet-born ritual blending ARG (alternate reality game) elements with creepypasta folklore. The challenge involves an eerie chant, a small act of self-harm, and a strange video, essentially compressing familiar horror conventions into a single bedroom-recorded moment.

What elevates the film beyond standard genre fare is its atmosphere of raw intimacy. Casey performs this ritual alone, staring directly into a camera, and that directness transforms what could feel gimmicky into something genuinely haunting. First screened at Sundance in 2021, the film earned devoted admirers for its honest portrayal of adolescent isolation and online identity.

The renewed interest comes as Schoenbrun's follow-up film, 'Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,' arrives in theaters, making this an opportune moment to discover or revisit their quietly influential first work.

Jane Schoenbrun has emerged as one of the more distinctive voices in contemporary American cinema, and their debut feature remains a compelling entry point into their artistic world. The film centers on Casey, a teenager who performs the World's Fair Challenge — a fictional internet ritual that mashes together the communal dread of creepypasta storytelling with the participatory structure of viral challenges like the ice bucket trend.

The challenge itself is deliberately lo-fi and familiar in its horror shorthand: a repeated incantation, a minor bloodletting, and a cryptic video. But Schoenbrun's genius lies in stripping away any campfire-story comfort. Casey does all of this alone in her bedroom, facing the camera head-on, and that unbroken gaze turns genre cliché into something deeply personal and unnerving. The horror here is less about monsters and more about the psychological weight of profound loneliness.

The film debuted at Sundance in 2021 and developed a passionate following among viewers attuned to its specific emotional frequency — people who recognized in Casey the particular alienation of growing up chronically online, seeking connection and identity through digital subcultures that exist somewhere between community and void.

Why it matters: Schoenbrun's work sits at a rare intersection of queer identity, internet culture, and horror, addressing experiences that mainstream cinema rarely takes seriously. As their profile rises with new theatrical releases, revisiting this debut offers important context for understanding a filmmaker whose thematic concerns — transformation, selfhood, the seductive danger of online mythology — feel increasingly urgent in the current media landscape.

With 'Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma' now in theaters and generating fresh conversation, audiences have a natural on-ramp to explore Schoenbrun's earlier work. For anyone curious about where thoughtful, unconventional horror filmmaking is heading, 'We're All Going to the World's Fair' is essential viewing.