I Saw the TV Glow

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.

I was thoroughly looking forward to this film but alas. The style, the cinematography and the subject matter are all well-executed and important. However, there is little to no nuisance. Any subtlety is not subtle and any message is overpowered by sub-par acting and loud, screeching, pretension.

Mysterious Skin (2006) is a film that's similar but done exceptionally better. While the subject matter is far from metaphoric, it's execution is brilliant. I Saw The TV Glow seems like a proof of concept with a powerful core message that had the glaring plot gaps filled with flashing visuals and nostalgia-bait.

This should've been a Tisch short.

"I Saw the TV Glow" refuses to hand anything over in a simple or didactic way, yet somehow manages to carve out really specific feelings in those who connect with its world-not through direct identification with the plot, but through an intimate resonance with a sensory, emotional, and symbolic experience that only cinema and television can truly express. Jane Schoenbrun builds something here that can't be called a traditional narrative, but also isn't just a purely aesthetic experiment. It's a collage of fragmented memories, symbols of a boiling inner world, and impressions of a self that, suffocated by the everyday, finds a kind of misshapen, mystical escape through television. At its core, it's a dark, warped coming-of-age story-one where the characters never quite grow up. Or maybe they do grow, but never emerge from the thick fog of an unspoken identity.

The movie kicks off with a surprisingly grounded premise for something so ethereal: Owen (played by Ian Foreman/Justice Smith), a shy kid from the '90s, meets Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), an outsider teen who introduces him to "The Pink Opaque," a fictional TV show that feels like a mix of "Goosebumps" and "Donnie Darko"-but with VHS vibes, robotic acting, and villains that seem like they were ripped from a nightmare taped over too many times. What first seems like a nostalgic tribute to an analog era of formative media ends up being a twisted mirror reflecting way deeper stuff-like the kind of emotional bond you build with fiction when you're isolated, displaced, or completely adrift in your own identity. There's something deeply melancholic about the almost religious attachment Owen develops to this cheap TV show. It's not about what the show is, but what it represents: a parallel world where maybe he could exist as he really is-or as he never will be.

Casting Justice Smith as the older version of Owen-with no attempt to smooth over the age gap, even though he clearly looks like a grown man playing a late teen-only reinforces the disconnect between physical time and emotional time. It's a bold choice that leans into its artificiality instead of hiding it, because that dissonance is the point: the feeling of watching your own life from a distance, stuck in an aesthetic that refuses to grow up, as if time froze emotionally the moment something couldn't be said, done, or lived. The film's visuals dive headfirst into this non-place aesthetic: neon lights, heavy shadows, overlapping images, and a dissonant soundtrack create a world where reality and fiction blur together-both for Owen, and for us.

Narratively, the movie teases the structure of a psychological horror but then completely abandons any attempt to guide the viewer through a clear line. There are abrupt cuts, time gaps, vanishing characters, absurd details (like Owen's job at a rec center where his only task is to restock plastic balls in a ball pit like it's life-or-death), and a dreamlike logic that feels more like a trance than a conventional story. But logic isn't the point-feeling is. And what "I Saw the TV Glow" makes you feel is a kind of unnamed grief, a constant emptiness, a life lived by proxy. Owen doesn't know how to say what he feels, but maybe "The Pink Opaque" says it for him. When he answers Maddy's question about his sexuality with "I think I like TV shows," it hits like a quiet confession-that he can only access truth through the filter of fiction. In this world, TV isn't escapism-it's survival.

The queer/trans symbolism is clear but never spelled out. That's part of the film's power: it doesn't label what's in crisis-body, gender, identity, voice. There's a constant discomfort that shows up in both the silences and the awkward dialogue, in alienating framing, in faces that never quite relax. The climax-or maybe anti-climax-where lights rise up from the floor and Owen breaks down visually and emotionally, could've easily come off as too much or overly derivative, but instead it carries a symbolic weight that's hard to shake off: it's the body breaking under the strain of a silenced identity, the mind imploding as it tries to reconcile the real with the ideal, the TV turned all the way up with no one left to hear it.

Yeah, the film sometimes slips into a bit of style-over-substance-like the live musical performances that feel more like nostalgic fetish than something rooted in the themes, or some references that seem pasted on more for aesthetic than narrative need-but Schoenbrun makes up for it with rare emotional honesty and a cohesive, immersive atmosphere. "I Saw the TV Glow" isn't an easy watch, and it's not always conventionally engaging, but its refusal to explain itself is exactly what makes it feel so raw and haunting. It doesn't want to be a manifesto, or a neat little allegory. It wants to be a blurry, grainy, warped reflection of a teenagerhood that never ended, of an identity that never had space, of a trauma only fiction dared to name.

It's hard to say whether "I Saw the TV Glow" liked you-or if you liked it. What's more likely is that it just watched you, quietly, like a TV left on late at night, glowing faintly, playing indecipherable sounds while you tried to fall asleep. And then suddenly, something in it understood you-or reminded you of something you've always known, but never had the courage to watch.

Bridgette Lundy-Paine delivered their lines like they were being fed to her through an ear piece. The terrible acting completely took me out of the universe the director was trying to convey. There were too many boring, drawn out monologues delivered monotonously without emotion, it almost became comical. It's really hard to connect to characters who show no resolve whatsoever. There were interesting themes but they were poorly executed, wish there was more emotional depth. There are so few actors with lines that these poor performances stick out like a sore thumb. Film has the vibe of a CW show written by an angsty teen who loves LED lighting.

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?"