【A Married Woman Next Door Who Raises Three Waters (2019)】

PARK CITY,A Married Woman Next Door Who Raises Three Waters (2019) Utah -- We've all been there: The 7th Circle of Instagram Jealousy Hell.

Maybe not the demonic depths to which Aubrey Plaza's character goes in Ingrid Goes West-- or with the same monstrous consequences -- but its flames have licked at anyone who's ever posted, liked, commented or cyber-stalked on Insta.

Lookin' at you, everyone with an account, ever.

As pervasive in our daily lives as social media-envy may be, movies (Men, Women & Children, Nerve) and TV shows (Black Mirror) have only begun to reckon with it -- and nothing's dredged up a more heinous, yet fully realized and relatable evil than Ingrid, the most blinding light yet shone into the ugly corners of human nature on social media.

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The feature debut of director Matt Spicer (who co-wrote with David Branson Smith) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and if you've ever felt the burning pangs of Insta-malice, you are going to love this film. And hate it. Both, really, all at once. Just like that cute selfie you're agonizing about whether to like.

If you've ever felt the burning pangs of Insta-malice, you are going to love this film. And hate it.

Plaza is abundantly delicious as Ingrid Thorburn, whose obsessive nature is six exits past healthy, obviously. She latches hard onto a target, then uses her considerable wits and wile to worm her way in; a process that, all by itself, is impressive to behold. Imagine if Veronica Mars or Bruce Wayne started Insta-crushing on you. How would you resist? You wouldn't -- not that you'd even know you wanted to because hey, who doesn't desire charming, attractive, adventurous, and fawning new friends in their lives?

The object of Ingrid's latest sick infatuation is middling social-media star Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen), a "photographer" who lives with her winsome, top-knotted artist husband in Venice, California. All it takes is for Taylor -- who presents that #blessed, #perfect life on Instagram -- to respond to one of Ingrid's comments and she's off to the races, moving to the West Coast and plotting brilliantly to move in on their lives.

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It's a wickedly clever blueprint for anyone who wants to next-level stalk someone, a totally plausible and easily duplicated plan. At first it works beautifully; Taylor and her husband are just accessible and open enough that soon Ingrid is having dinner at their house, road-tripping with her new BFF, and barely containing her twisted desire as Taylor heaps her with facile praise and affection.

Plaza's eyes are the windows to her damaged soul, showing us how wrong this whole thing really is. Without them, you might begin to think "what's the problem with this dynamic, really?" as the friendship deepens. But her deceptions are deepening too, and with them, the tension is mounting to squirm-in-your-seat levels. More characters introduce new opportunities for mayhem. It's almost too much to bear.

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O'Shea Jackson Jr. (Straight Outta Compton) is one such character, and he's just utterly dynamite as Ingrid's landlord, with whom she must start sleeping to keep the ruse alive; he extracts multitudes from a small yet pivotal role. But it's the impossibly chiseled Billy Magnussen (Kato Kaelin in The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story) who steals the show as Taylor's brother, a frighteningly feral, drug-addicted party-boy whose unpredictable energy just destroys everything onscreen. His mashup of charm and evil will haunt your dreams.

Each of these side characters has layers that reveal in a parade of increasing dread, then pay off in meaningful, terrifying ways. There is a Cape Fear-level sense of doom about every scene in Ingrid Goes West, whose tension is so palpable by the end that you think there's just no waythis thing is going to come to any kind of satisfying conclusion.

And then ... it does. And just as it should be, it is dark.

The whole thing exposes an unsettling vulnerability on both sides of the Instagram-envy equation: Everyone who's social-media active is constantly exposed to becoming a Taylor, who telegraphs her preferences and whereabouts on social media -- or an Ingrid, who can easily piece all of it together and spin it into an inescapable web.

Which one are you?

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

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