‘I Saw The TV Glow’ Review
At night, rows of picturesque homes lie within the confines of suburbia, lit only by the glow of a television set through the living room window. It is a “normal” life where the only visible pain is an aesthetic one with sidewalks and dimly lit streets vandalized by kids with chalk. Inside those homes reside a generation of youth whose only comforts are in the digital and analog dreams projected on the screen - where they can feel seen or determine what is expected to be seen. That foundation of a refuge that can be intoxicating at a formative time fuels Jane Schoenbrun’s intimate and terrifying sophomore narrative feature, I Saw The TV Glow. With a particular vibe and narrative that is both transportive and nostalgic, Schoenbrun presents a highly original, monumental, and suffocating portrait of gender identity, escapism, and the support systems needed to discover oneself in a sea of homogeneity.
The moments in life that feel like a powder keg of emotion slowly inching closer to exploding into oblivion color the narrative structure of I Saw The TV Glow. It elicits the fear that leaves us dreading change and prevents us from realizing our emotions and individuality as positive affirmations of who we are inside. I Saw The TV Glow is littered with these moments as Schoenbrun’s screenplay straps Owen (Justice Smith) into euphoric moments that force him to question what brings him back to Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) - the strange, older girl in his high school - and a children’s program on the Young Adult Network titled The Pink Opaque.
A kid in the 1990s, Owen (whose younger self is played by Ian Foreman) stumbles upon a commercial for The Pink Opaque and is fascinated by it but unable to watch it due to it airing past his bedtime. When he encounters Maddy studiously reading an episode guide for the show, they begin to form a connection. Maddy starts secretly leaving recorded episodes of the show on VHS tapes for Owen to watch. The Pink Opaque revolves around two girls connected through the Psychic Plane who are forced to fight a monster of the week and thwart the evil plans of Mr. Melancholy - a malevolent force that sees all from the night sky above. It’s more than just a kid’s show, though, as it fleshes out its lore with each episode and wrestles with themes that resonate with Maddy and Owen. The Pink Opaque becomes an obsession and an escape - a refuge for two lost souls trying to make sense of reality and their place within it. “Sometimes The Pink Opaque feels more real than real life,” admits Maddy as she hides from her abusive stepdad upstairs while letting Owen sleep in her basement to watch the show as it airs.
Schoenbrun’s cultural touchstones are hyper-specific and niche, but the feeling they evoke is still palpable to those who grew up in the ‘90s. There are some more obvious influences like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but the magic of I Saw The TV Glow is that it doesn’t waver in its commitment to depicting a very specific type of children’s programming. That’s the transportive element of its singular vision. It is the kind of show that takes on a whole new life with you, and you reflect on it through the years as if it were a landmark discovery attuned exclusively to your tastes and interests. The kind of show where discovering someone else watches it isn’t just cool - it’s monumental. The Pink Opaque’s haunting iconography permeates the film, serving as a foundation for what grows into a psychological drama spliced together within a suburban nightmare. The relationship at its center is not just two people forever changed by their shared passions but two people finally comfortable with someone else to navigate life outside of the show.
Schoenbrun’s vision also has an aesthetic beauty. Like their previous film, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, it has that creepypasta vibe, but here, it’s amplified through scanlines that filter waves of nostalgia. Much of the allure is that I Saw The TV Glow commits to its nostalgia as Owen narrates his own experience through the lens of a formative television program. His details often highlight the remarkably mundane debris left in the wake of tragedy - the things that can comfort us because they are familiar and always there. Again scored by Alex G, there is also an immense soundtrack coloring the film’s nostalgic atmosphere with artists like Phoebe Bridgers, Sloppy Jane, King Woman, and many other artists who range from widely known to incredible discoveries. It’s a curated soundtrack that befits the tone settled within I Saw The TV Glow’s DNA. It’s an undeniable highlight of the film and placed center stage multiple times throughout, accentuated by Eric Yue’s beautifully lit cinematography.
Intense emotional sequences tend to drive forward I Saw The TV Glow. They capture silent suffering internalized at a formative age—acknowledged but ignored by those around them in a refusal to support what goes against the grain. Owen’s tenuous relationship with his father (played by Fred Durst) is highlighted by his insistence on asking his mother (Danielle Deadwyler) to ask him questions on Owen’s behalf. There’s an understanding that they know Owen is wrestling with something, but he keeps it bottled up out of fear of straying from expectation. That fear leads to a constant struggle within Owen’s life and creates a stop-and-start momentum to the pacing of I Saw The TV Glow. It digs underneath your skin as you watch someone wrestle with who they are, and Schoenbrun ends up capturing a specifically transgender experience through Owen’s personal strife. Sofi Marshall does a wonderful job editing the film, keeping that momentum propulsive even when intended to stall. Scenes seem to drift within one another, overlapping naturally and allowing time to reflect, which leads to the feelings bubbling underneath the film’s surface to overwhelm as much as they fuel the pacing. They feel like fragments of a memory latched onto and fleshed out.
Smith and Lundy-Paine convey a rawness and intensity in their performances, demonstrating the internalized severity of their individual conflicts while imbuing the film with a sincerity that makes it feel like they’re the only two in this world. Much like The Pink Opaque, their characters form a bond through distance, only physically sharing the same space when absolutely necessary; characters that struggle but try to navigate their lives independently, only reaching out when it’s too much to bear alone. Lundy-Paine is a revelation in I Saw The TV Glow as she depicts an obsession that’s too strong to convey in mere words - something that needs to be shared to be understood. Smith’s own vulnerable performance is the aforementioned powder keg; he lets the fuse burn on with his fingers near the wick, ready to stop it before it forces him into the unknown.
The feeling that The Pink Opaque is more real than reality itself is not as individual of a thought as it may seem on the surface. The same is true with I Saw The TV Glow, and that’s the beauty of its specificity because its ability to resonate or illicit empathy from its audience gives it a remarkable power: the strength to fight the demons that Mr. Melancholy sends every week and lean on those who care for you in the most challenging times. I Saw The TV Glow is a heartwrenching and necessary view into a quiet anguish that can lead to irreparable damage and harm to those we love. Its horror comes from nightmarish images and crippling expectations that we’ve burned into our brains, whether they were there or not, and how easy it is to live in torment and miss the single hand reaching out to help in the darkness. Simply put, I Saw The TV Glow is one of the most vital films of the 21st century as it empowers us to look inside while directly confronting what it means not to feel allowed to be who you are.
