I Saw the TV Glow

As steeped irony it may be, few things feel more inherently uncinematic than the act of watching films and TV shows, which surely accounts for why audiences see so little of it on their screens. After all, to gaze into a screen at people gazing into screens offers only a distorted reflection, not an escape. It is in this tension between worlds real and projected that writer-director Jane Schoenbrun thrives. With We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, their chronically, ambivalently online feature debut, Schoenbrun emerged as a voice uniquely willing to confront our complex relationship to the screens so prevalent in our inner lives. Their hugely accomplished second feature probes even deeper, posing the question of just what it is people talk about when they talk about their favourite TV shows.

Suburban outcast Owen (first Ian Foreman, then Justice Smith) doesn’t even need to see The Pink Opaque to know it’s for him. In listening to fellow outcast Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) speak with fierce protectiveness of the past bedtime YA show’s psychically bonded leads, its villain, its cheesy monsters of the week, a picture seems to form in his eyes of everything he could possibly want in life. Or at least, the perfect substitute for ever having to face what that is. In its largely unspoken way, Owen and Maddy’s shared fandom is sacred, a refuge from the world and an outlet for feelings they cannot name. Until Maddy disappears.

At first, I Saw the TV Glow’s overpowering emotional effect comes almost as a surprise, as if one didn’t realise the extent to which it had burrowed under the skin. Really, one need only think on Smith and Lundy-Paine in these early scenes to know where it came from. When almost anywhere, they sleepwalk, their faraway gazes animated less by vacancy than by the feverish anticipation of return to their real world. When sharing confidences about The Pink Opaque, they are newly alive with nervous energy, exploring with trepidation the idea that someone else could understand the show as keenly as they do, which may be tantamount to being understood themselves.

These anxious, passionate disclosures have an unmistakable ring of truth to the neurodivergent experience of building one’s selfhood within the safety of unreal worlds, but Schoenbrun and DP Eric Yue know the warmth of the screen is hollow. Awash in neon blues and pinks, it’s as if Owen and Maddy’s whole world is lit by a TV. Schoenbrun’s ultimate feat is how swiftly this hazy comfort shifts to mistrust, then to panic, and finally to the most crushing despair. For all the love Owen and Maddy have invested in the world behind the screen, it does not love them back.

Thomas Messner

I Saw the TV Glow does not have a UK release date yet.

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Watch the trailer for I Saw the TV Glow here: