Ingrid Goes West

The experience is akin to being kneaded by a cat - now soft paws, now sharp claws, alternatingly sweet and deeply uncomfortable.

"Ingrid Goes West" is a sharp, insightful modern day stalker fantasy, "Single White Female" through a Valencia Instagram filter.

Plaza, of course, is marvelous in the title role, embracing Ingrid's unflattering neediness with a commitment that's scary.

Aubrey Plaza is brilliant in "Ingrid goes West," Matt Spicer's smart, satirical and sometimes scathing takedown of the vapidity social media sometimes injects into life.

Now 33, Plaza can still get away with playing an ingenue (that's what Ingrid is, a toxic ingenue). She can do comedy. She can do drama. She's best of all, as here, at combining both.

You won't remember "Ingrid Goes West" for long after it's over, but as summer diversions go, you could do much worse.

Aubrey Plaza is a gifted comic actress whose skill set fits the material snug like a wine-bottle coozie.

If there's any recent film that has dealt with our craze for social media in the most intelligent and assured of ways, it would be Matt Spicer's "Ingrid Goes West."

Ingrid Goes West is equal parts scathing social satire, horror movie, and character portrait. It's self-aware enough to include a Single White Female joke, but it's not the kind of jokey movie that winks at itself.

...a darkly funny cautionary tale about the dangers of social media...

Attempts to shade in Ingrid and Dan's tragic backstories are cursory and more than a little clichéd, but so spot on is the satire that it's hard to imagine this being done better.

This darkly comic satire is beautifully twisted and loads of fun but, at its heart, is an important look at how we now interact with each other and how we live day to day.