'I Saw the TV Glow' is a Hypnotic Masterpiece that Contends with Nostalgia and The Feeling of Otherness

​When I was a kid, the TV was always aglow in my house. It served as both comfort and companionship for an awkward introvert who didn’t feel accepted. A window into dreams; an escape with fantasies that made life seem more magical. Yet it was also a drug that kept me indoors, away from people and real life. Writer/director Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow critiques our attachment to childhood nostalgias. The wonder. The comfort. The distraction. All through a hypnotic masterpiece that pierces the heart like a unicorn's radiant horn. 
 
Owen (Justice Smith) has never gotten along with reality. Secluded within himself and acutely aware of society’s judgmental gaze, he doesn’t have many friends. Until he meets Maddy (Bridgette Lundy-Paine), an outcast herself, obsessed with the show ‘The Pink Opaque’. A 90s monster of the week series, it plays on the Young Adult Network every Saturday night at 10:30pm, just fifteen minutes past Owen’s bedtime (one that his parents enforce even after he’s in high-school). One night, Maddy invites him over to watch it…propelling Owen into a new obsession and friendship that haunt him throughout the decades of his otherwise mundane life. 
 
Between I Saw the TV Glow and We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, Schoenbrun has established themself as a unique voice that explores the best and worst of our relationship with fantasy. A grainy tribute to the likes of Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Pink Opaque features heroes Isabel (Helena Howard) and Tara (Lindsey Jordan), able to communicate telepathically across the county as they face off against creatures sent by the big bad, Mr. Melancholy (Emma Portner). Through neon blues, greens, and pinks reminiscent of the chalk pictures that filled the streets of the 90s, we're transported back to that colorful period and into the lives of two loners bonded by fandom. Barriers of age and reality break down until it’s just Owen, and Maddy, and the escape of The Pink Opaque. Nothing else matters. And for a dysphoric pair who don’t feel a part of anything else, that connection is everything.

Aside from immaculately conceived creatures such as melty ice-cream beasts and moon-shaped ghouls that lurk within The Pink Opaque, I Saw the TV Glow is less about monsters and more concerned with the every-day horrors of merely existing. Owen’s dad is strict. His mom has cancer. Both he and Maddy have been exiled from society over their sexuality, she a queer woman and Owen an ace kid struggling with his identity. The world is cruel to them. Life is dull.  Reality is everything that The Pink Opaque is not. Despite being based around a “scary” show, scares are not Schoenbrun’s aim. What’s horrifying here is their depiction of how empty life can feel. How disconnected from our own self that we can become. How aimless the future can seem. They highlight the misery that accompanies not fitting in or understanding who you really are, accentuated by Smith and Lundy-Paine's screen-grabbing performances. Whenever you start to feel a warmth emanating from the characters, their quiet unease creeps in.  
 
Schoenbrun’s intent does not lie in lifting up childhood nostalgia like Simba in The Lion King for all to cheer. Instead, the filmmaker probes the discomfort that comes with such disconnection. When your whole identity is a TV show, who are you, really? That’s a question that Owen contends with all throughout this haunting commentary on our fear to let go of fantasy. From a 7th grader at Void High to an adult working at an arcade, we live with his terror of engaging in real life. Of opening up to others. The emptiness. The sadness. No doubt a reflection of our culture that has become hesitant of what’s ahead. We hold onto childhood comforts for dear life these days, one finger slipping at a time as we're pulled into the inevitability of time. Schoenbrun’s film wraps us in the comfortable warmth of nostalgia, sure, but it does so while reminding us of the danger in letting it become a prison. Owen's fantasy and reality melt together into a surreal nightmare tormented by moon-men and boring jobs...a life he can't wake up from. 
 
Defined by awkward interactions and Lynchian horrors, I Saw the TV Glow won’t be for those who are unwilling to give into its spell. That’s okay, because it isn’t for them. Schoenbrun’s film is for anyone who feels trapped inside their own skin. People struggling with their identity. Those who sense someone else within but are perhaps afraid to let them out. It encompasses all those feelings with an understanding hug. I don't think it's hyperbole to say I Saw the TV Glow is one of the definitive films of our generation. It captures our relationship with media and ourselves unlike anything else out there.

We’re lucky to live in a time with filmmakers like Jane Schoenbrun giving voice to those who have so often gone unheard.
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I Saw the TV Glow arrives on theaters May 3rd from A24.  

By Matt Konopka