I Saw the TV Glow

No judgment. Definitely not a traditional "horror" film, but scary none the less. I was a freshman girl in 1996. This is what it felt like.... Fighting to get to the next season of our lives. Fighting to be understood and to understand ourselves. We were in such a hurry to grow up we didn't fully appreciate our youth. Some of us didn't make it. I did and I wonder which outcome is better. We die quickly or we die slowly. This film made me feel very seen and also scared for the next generations. Some things are better and some are way worse. If we do it or not our teenage selves die... it's all about if we become something better. The question is "What is better?"

I am a straight white man, and I liked this movie. I watched it this evening. After letting it sink in and after dwelling on it, I came here. I skimmed the user reviews. First of all, if you didn't finish watching the movie, then you shouldn't review it.

A lot of people who didn't like it criticized the acting. To me the acting felt like awkward teenagers being awkward teenagers.

A lot of the people who did like it saw it as a queer/trans allegory. Rock on, good for them.

I saw it as a reminder of the awkwardness of being a teenager, trying to make new friends. The obsession with a TV show reminded me how sometimes a TV show can become your identity and can sometimes help you survive said teenage awkwardness. (For me it was The X-Files.) Go in with an open mind and let its atmosphere draw you in.

It features many dynamite indie rockers (both in cameos and musically), it started off great with interesting characters and EXCELLENT aesthetics - as a millennial, I felt a lot of nostalgia for similar shows I used to watch growing up. Ultimately though, the story fell apart and offered little substance.

The film has an interesting and societally relevant theme, but I think that's where this falls flat - a great film may elicit the response:

"That was a great story - what were its most prominent themes?"

But instead I found myself asking:

"That was an interesting theme - what were its most prominent plot lines?"

I can understand if this movie is divisive because it doesn't meet the audience halfway. You have to stick with it and figure it out.

The ostensible story is, two alienated teenagers who find a tenuous connection to each other via a cultish series called The Pink Opaque, which is a bit like Buffy the Vampire Slayer made by David Lynch.

By the end, the theme emerges: how people suffocate their own lives by ignoring or cutting out their own hearts.

The story could have been told just by depicting Owen's sad, stunted life. The fantastical elements are there to make the theme more obvious, not to mention far more entertaining.

This isn't a horror movie, unless you see the horror of a sad, wasted life. The segment where Owen re-watches The Pink Opaque on "streaming" is particularly chilling in its implications.

This film should not be labeled as a horror movie in my honest opinion. Perhaps it would be better off labeled as a teen, coming of age, sci-fi, drama? To be honest I'm actually not even sure, it's a bit difficult to even label what genre it's exactly supposed to be. Even the synopsis on IMDB doesn't feel like it's a good way to say what the movie is about.

I get the messages that it all tried to convey but the fact that so much of the dialogue was delivered in a quite a slow and monotone way just ended up making it feel boring in the long run.

I'm not going to tell you that it's a horrible movie, but it most definitely just wasn't for me.