Ingrid Goes West

Aubrey plaza isn’t such a sweetstalking girl in this riotously funny black comedy

Comedy

Sunday, Sky Premiere HD, 2.10pm & 10pm 4

A Single White Female for the age of Instagram, this wickedly funny black comedy stars Aubrey Plaza as a mentally unstable internet stalker and Elizabeth Olsen as the vapid social media celebrity on whom she is fixated.

We first encounter Plaza’s glassy-eyed Ingrid Thornton in mid meltdown, gate-crashing the wedding of a stranger she deludedly imagines is her friend simply because she follows her on Instagram. A spell in a mental institution follows, but on her release it isn’t long before Ingrid has found another fixation in the shape of Olsen’s glamorous social media influencer Taylor Sloane.

Captivated by Taylor’s photo ready life of hipster cool and funded by an inheritance from her mother, Ingrid leaves her Pennsylvania home and heads for Venice Beach, California, the well-heeled bohemian neighbourhood where her girl crush lives. There she rents an apartment from Batman-obsessed screenwriter Dan (O’Shea Jackson Jr, last seen playing his father Ice Cube in rap biopic Straight Outta Compton) and sets about infiltrating her idol’s circle.

Her efforts are cringe-makingly funny. She ‘finds’ Taylor’s dog (having first kidnapped the pooch herself), copies her taste and even buys one of her husband’s ghastly artworks. Yet Ingrid’s exertions pay off and she is soon bezzie mates with her heroine. Then Taylor’s loathsome brother Nicky (Billy Magnussen) turns up and sees through Ingrid’s act…