I Saw the TV Glow [Review]
Jane Schoenbrun made an Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode by way of David Lynch to limited success.
Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine Credit: A24.
Feeling more like a bizarro Afterschool Special than a feature film, Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow is a film about a teen’s search for identity and our fascination with nostalgia. At just a lean 100 minutes, the movie feels like it’s several insufferable hours long.
Lonely teenager Owen (Ian Foreman as a 7th grader, Justice Smith as a far too old looking 9th grader and later adult) meets Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), a teen two years his senior, and connects over a fascination with a YA TV show, The Pink Opaque. Owen is clearly searching for his own identity—he suffers from dysphoria, confessing to Maddy that he feels like someone “dug out [his] insides” when she asks about his sexuality—and builds his identity through his fascination with The Pink Opaque. Owen watches in secret, a metaphor for hiding his identity; he lives with his well-meaning mother (Danielle Deadwyler) and oppressive father (Fred Durst), who at one point calls The Pink Opaque a “show for girls.”
Lindsey Jordan, Helena Howard Credit: Spencer Pazer / A24.
During the movie’s nearly hour long first act, Maddy runs away or simply vanishes, leaving behind only a burning TV in her back yard. Years later, Maddy reappears and tries to convince Owen that The Pink Opaque is actually their reality, that she’s broken out of its villain’s manipulation, and that Owen must wake up. If this was The Matrix, Neo has chosen to take the blue pill.
It feels like Schoenbrun is channeling their nostalgia for 90’s YA television through the lens of a Twin Peaks: The Return episode, complete with a musical performance in the film’s equivalent to Peaks’ Bang Bang Bar, the Double Lunch, a place that seems to cross over from I Saw the TV Glow’s fictional The Pink Opaque to its “real” world. The whole thing feels like a pastiche of Lynchian surrealism and suburban horror, with its own (admittedly terrifying) Black Lodge monsters and garmonbozia, seen here as blue goop instead of creamed corn.
Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman Credit: Spencer Pazer / A24.
I appreciate the film’s message and extended metaphor for a person discovering they are trans, but I Saw the TV Glow’s execution left me cold. Stilted dialogue in over-long monologues and unbearably slow pacing make the film feel like it’s a poor version of what could have been an excellent 40 minute episode of television. The movie often relies too much on telling rather than showing, such as in a pivotal scene with an extended, 5-10 minute monologue Maddy delivers about where she’s been. The whole thing takes too long to get going and often feels unsettling for its own sake.
Brigette Lundy-Paine. Credit: By Spencer Pazer / A24.
I did like the film’s look. Shot on 35mm film, it’s filled with day-glo color, matching the hot pink that’s the signature hue of The Pink Opaque. Faces are often lit with glows emanated from things in or just outside the film’s frame—a neon-lit fish tank, candy-colored lights of a fair, and (fittingly) the glow of tube TVs.
Like the prospect of being unsure of your own identity is a scary thing, so is the idea of not being sure if what’s on the other side of a TV set is actually reality and having it bleed into your life. The metaphor is an apt one and the fear and confusion are palpable, but I wish Schoenbrun gave us a better film to contain it.
I Saw the TV Glow is in limited release now. The film will open in theaters nationwide on May 17, 2024.
