The Beautiful Tragedy of I Saw the TV Glow

I Saw the TV Glow is a horror film, but not in the sense that viewers will scatter popcorn across their laps, jolting in fright and covering their eyes. It is more terrifying than that. The film is a horror in the sense that unease seeps right into a viewer’s heart, until they feel it as a pang in their chests. They fear not the kitschy monsters, but the thoughts the film inserts into their minds – ones of belonging (or better yet, not belonging), of feeling trapped in yourself, unable to speak.

I Saw the TV Glow, director Jane Shonebrun’s second feature film, follows two teenagers – Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Owen (Justice Smith) – barely surviving in the claustrophobia of cookie-cutter suburbia. Both lonely, they bond over a bizarre children’s television show, The Pink Opaque. As Maddy draws Owen into her obsession with the show, they both begin to see it as an escape from their dreary lives, and a way of reframing the identities they feel they are trapped in. The film had a nationwide release on May 17, 2024 and is now available on VOD.

In all honesty, I didn’t truly feel the impact of I Saw the TV Glow until later in the night, hours after the screen reflected onto my eyes. With my head resting on my pillow, the noises of outside quieted to amplify the ones in my mind. Complete unease and a bizarrely comforting paralysis.

I realized that all the while since I had seen the film – while I stood up from the velvet seat, drove home, chatted with my family over dinner, read a book, and cleaned my room before bed – I had been feeling an acute sense of discomfort. A pit in my stomach – underneath layers and layers of distraction like the mattress separating the princess from the pea.

I was listening to the soundtrack while cleaning my room and the line “This isn’t how to be” from Caroline Polachek’s enchanting track, “Starburned and Sunkissed” stopped me in my tracks. It brought me back to a scene in the film, with Maddy lamenting, “This isn’t how life is supposed to feel.” It felt uncanny, like a memory. Hearing that line made me feel a pang of dread, the exact sensation I felt while watching the film.

The entire movie feels like this – like the brush of an exact, specific emotion you once felt, not remembering where it exactly came from, but knowing you miss it and dread it at the same time. Sad it’s over but also sad it ever happened in the first place. Nostalgia with any sweetness dissolved from the surface, left only with the sour core.

I Saw the TV Glow leaves viewers with disquieting reflection. It doesn’t overtly ask, but forcefully prompts audience members to think about what has come together, what has happened to bring them to where they are right now, sitting here in this dark theater, tears illuminated by neons. Monologues such as Maddy’s mid-way through the film, “Time wasn't right. It was moving too fast. And then I was 19. And then I was 20. I felt like one of those dolls asleep in the supermarket. Stuffed. And then I was 21. Like chapters skipped over on a DVD,” prompt personal contemplation amongst viewers.

We have barely had time to consider how truly formative the people we met, the media we watched, the way we viewed ourselves wholly determined our futures. Is there anything we can do to redirect the path we’re on, or does it continue in a circle?

More importantly, the film provides a heartbreakingly compelling depiction of gender and sexuality, and the lifelong journey figuring them out can be. Teenage years and early adulthood are known as the most formative years of a person’s life, but they are also the most unsteady. How are we supposed to set the foundation of our lives if our brains are still developing? How are we supposed to understand ourselves while we are still trying to figure out those around us? How do you articulate or express what you may not even comprehend – or what you’ve been hidden from? And how can you even begin to learn if you're living in a whirlwind? As a character of The Pink Opaque says, “I don’t even have my learner's permit yet; how can I have a destiny?” The characters, unable to see themselves, let alone understand or express what lies within feel suffocated.

Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine star in “I Saw the TV Glow.” Photograph courtesy A24

Audiences feel this suffocation as well; they breathe in the despair. The film takes audiences decades into Owen’s life. Discomfort and confusion follow him wherever he goes. Until he finally gets a glimpse (literally) of what’s inside him – a question he’s been asking throughout the decades. As he slices open his chest, light and static beaming through, audiences are reminded of a vulnerability he shares with Maddy earlier in the singer, “When I think about all that stuff [sexuality, identity], it feels like someone took a shovel and dug out all of my insides. And I know there’s nothing in there, but I’m still too nervous to open myself up and check.”

But, by the end of the film, maybe he has finally discovered himself. Maybe it’s not too late. As the film’s cul-de-sac pavement reads, “There is still time.”

But, of course, the film doesn’t leave audiences on this release. There are the big “what ifs.” What if Owen found himself earlier; what if he didn’t feel like he had to catch up to something? The immense fear coming from this regret is what makes this film a horror.

Viewers of I Saw the TV Glow are lucky victims, cursed to dwell in dreadful existentialism, but privileged to see the amazement of Shonebrun.