A few weeks back, I was scrolling through Instagram and came by an ad for the series that premiered on The WB in its heyday.  A cavalcade of Noxzema-cleansed stars in either a combo of hip-hugging jeans and mid-riff baring shirts or cargo pants and baggy polos blazed by me as fast as my high school experience flashed before my eyes.  I never have to dig far to find the memories of weeknights spent with these shows and their drama-filled storylines; they’ll live rent-free in my head until I take my final slumber.  Call it the perfect blend of programming and appeal to the frontal cortex, but the 90s and early 2000s couldn’t be beaten if you were a teen seeking an escape not too far from your locker.

Director Jane Schoenbrun also has a fondness for this period because they’ve centered their sophomore feature, I Saw the TV Glow, around this same period and focused attention on an imagined series not unlike a particular show that slayed its fans every Tuesday night.  Joining a long line of films that blur the boundary between fiction and reality, Schoenbrun pulls scraps of pages from the David Lynch, Darren Aronofsky, and Charlie Kaufman handbook but is writing their own manual on genre filmmaking.  Partnering with A24 (doesn’t it feel like the studio is slowly calling its children home?), Schoenbrun’s film is categorized as a combination of drama and horror, but that’s putting it into a box it never was going to fit into.  Look closer, and you’ll see it’s a profoundly personal embrace of surreal fandom, unconventional identities, and how the dark allure of television can transcend our perception of what we believe is true.

Shy and introspective Owen (Ian Foreman, Exhibiting Forgiveness) can’t explain why he is drawn to the silent teen he sees around school, but he’s moved to approach Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine, Amelia’s Children) and inquire about the book she’s reading.  It’s an episode guide for The Pink Opaque, a television show that airs late on Saturday night and involves two girls who met at summer camp and formed a psychic bond that helps them fight evil in their respective towns.  From the clips we’re shown, it’s not groundbreaking television, but for the unlikely duo, it casts a magical spell on them they can’t put into words.  

Despite their contrasting backgrounds (her mom is absent, and his strict father calls the shots in their household), a friendship develops, even after Owen’s dad (Fred Durst, yes, that Fred Durst) forbids Owen (now played by Justice Smith, Jurassic World Dominion) to hang out with Maddy.  As the years fly by, Owen’s life takes a dark turn after his mother (a dynamite Danielle Deadwyler, The Devil to Pay) falls ill, and while they take some solace in covert screenings of previously aired episodes, soon after, Maddy mysteriously vanishes.  And then the show is canceled.  However, after nearly a decade, Owen is visited by a familiar face with disturbing revelations about the show that throws into question everything he thought he knew (and remembered) about his time with Maddy.  Haunted by mysteries surrounding a television series and a friend with unfinished finales, his life spirals out of control until a reckoning arrives with implications far beyond the closing credits.

Smith is an actor who has never been much on my radar, yet recently, he’s been making choices that I find intriguing and frequently exciting.  He’s often a stand-in for Schoenbrun’s message of letting go of one life and moving into another, whatever that looks like for the individual.  By Owen and Maddy devoting so much of their time and attention to The Pink Opaque and its legacy after it was canceled, you can tie it back to one’s fear of losing their individuality were they to admit to a time in their life being over.  That’s why nostalgia continues to be such an easy sell to consumers – “buy XXX and you can continue to feel XXX forever!”   Understanding where Schoenbrun is taking Owen is key to Smith’s respectable performance.  Similarly, Lundy-Paine has magnetic (platonic) chemistry with Smith, which makes the intricate developments of the second half striking.    

As layered as Schoenbrun is from a narrative angle, they are also attuned to the visual and aural experience possible in their film, and it’s how I Saw the TV Glow has such a uniquely dreamlike quality courtesy of Eric K. Yue’s (A Thousand and One) cinematography.  Yu heightens the emotional resonance by detailing the period-specific production design and capturing the eerie beauty of Owen and Maddy’s world.  Further transporting the viewer is an ethereal soundtrack commissioned by Schoenbrun from various performers that evoke a sense of familiarity with the era but leave you with a meticulously prickly unease.

I’m struggling to call I Saw the TV Glow a horror film because the terror it stirs isn’t anything on a conventional level.  It’s a captivating, radically different entry in a genre often defined by its classic standards.  Continuing their intriguing cinematic discourse on the trans experience, Schoenbrun’s film co-ops comfort food television as a lens to explore current realities and, yes, horrors. Though the film’s authenticity is layered within a narrative that sometimes threatens to obscure it, especially as it starts to get twisted and fumble through third-act tangents, this complexity adds to its escapist appeal.