The film stars Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, Billy Magnussen, Wyatt Russell, Pom Klementieff, and O'Shea Jackson Jr., and follows a young woman who moves to Los Angeles in an effort to befriend her Instagram idol.

Ingrid Thorburn, a lonely and mentally unstable young woman in Pennsylvania, has returned home after a stay in a recovery facility.

While obsessively perusing social media, Ingrid learns of another influencer, the Los Angeles-based Taylor Sloane.

She rents a house in Venice from Dan Pinto, an aspiring screenwriter, and gets a makeover to emulate Taylor's style.

The next day, Ingrid asks to borrow Dan's truck so she can help Taylor move some belongings to her vacation home in Joshua Tree.

In a last-ditch attempt to reach Taylor, Ingrid moves into the small house next door to her Joshua Tree place.

The electricity where Ingrid is staying fails, which leads her to walk over to Taylor's home, where a Halloween party is being thrown, in order to charge her phone.

She records a video for her public Instagram page in which she confesses her past deception and expresses hopelessness about whether she can change.

Dan informs Ingrid that her video has gone viral, and thousands of strangers have used the hashtag #iamingrid to show support.

Matt Spicer and David Branson Smith said the script was inspired by "our mutual obsession with Instagram and how it brings out the worst in us, making us feel bad about ourselves, while also being wildly entertaining and addictive.

"[10][11] Some of the films Spicer and Smith drew inspiration from included The Talented Mr. Ripley, Taxi Driver, and Single White Female.

[14][11] Principal photography, which took place over five weeks,[15] began in July 2016 in Los Angeles and wrapped that August in Joshua Tree, California.

The website's consensus reads: "Led by strong performances from Aubrey Plaza and Elizabeth Olsen, Ingrid Goes West delivers smart, topical humor underlined by timely social observations.

"[23] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 71 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

The film lampoons stuff that didn't even exist 10 years ago but has now become such a part of our everyday lives that no one takes a second to consider the potential negative effects.

[27][28][29] Matthew Eng of Little White Lies wrote, "Through Plaza, Spicer’s film achieves the highwire humour it seeks, but its thematic heft is light and its dual depictions of addiction and mental illness are rooted in a reactionary finger-wagging that leaves its antiheroine more diagnosed than explored.