We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is hailed as an intimate coming-of-age horror film, yet upon closer inspection, it begs a few questions. Schoenbrun packs so many horror tropes into Casey’s World’s Fair Challenge—ARG creepypasta, ice bucket challenge, bloodletting, and a mysterious video—that one might wonder if the fair itself is just a thinly veiled excuse for a montage of scares.

First off, the ARG element feels shoehorned in. Are we really supposed to believe that Casey, alone in her room, can unravel an entire alternate reality game while simultaneously enduring bloodletting and staring into the abyss? It’s like the film assumes we’ll overlook that ARGs usually require interaction across multiple platforms—social media, websites, emails—and here it’s distilled to a single protagonist’s bedroom.

Then there’s the mantra. What is it? “We’re all going to the World’s Fair”? Is it meant to echo existential dread or just a catchy tagline? It sounds more like a slogan for a hipster coffee shop than a deep dive into horror. The bloodletting scene follows suit—so much crimson, yet we never see the payoff of what exactly is being sacrificed.

Lastly, the mysterious video: does it reveal the killer, the secret behind Camp Miasma, or perhaps both? Or does it just serve as another visual tick-box in Schoenbrun’s horror checklist, leaving us to wonder if Casey even watches it before confronting her fears?

In essence, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair dazzles with its rapid-fire horror tropes but sometimes at the expense of coherence. It’s a film that loves to show you everything—ARGs, blood, and fairgrounds—but forgets to pause and let you breathe between each scare. Still, for fans of bite-sized horror bites, it’s a delightful ride worth revisiting before diving into Schoenbrun’s Camp Miasma adventures.