I Saw the TV Glow Review (Film, 2024)

content warning: blood, gore, violence against children, domestic violence (discussed), grieving

Nostalgia can be a powerful tonic. Writer/director Jane Schoenbrun (We’re All Going to the World’s Fair) embraces and even weaponizes nostalgia in her coming of age psychological horror film I Saw the TV Glow.

Owen is a loner. His overly protective mother and TV-obsessed father try to control all aspects of his life well into middle school. He’s not even allowed to stay up late on the weekend to watch the TV show The Pink Opaque, a monster-of-the-week horror series for preteens he sees ads for all the time. A chance encounter with older high school student Maddy brings him face to face with the show for the first time.

I Saw the TV Glow is a hazy love-letter to 90s YA TV series gently wrapped in the trappings of analog horror. I imagine every millennial has their own memories of a media property like The Pink Opaque. The idea of a YA market was still very much establishing what was or wasn’t appropriate to include in series targeted for younger people looking for scares or thrills. For me, that pilot episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? with the haunted taxi cab is forever burned in my memory.

The Pink Opaque is a very specific kind of TV series. A brief car ride with a slightly older Owen reveals the show is dismissed as something just for girls. Maddy, his now best friend, knows everything about the show, has every episode on tape, and also struggles to make meaningful connections with her peers who seem to have grown out of their The Pink Opaque phase in high school. What Owen and Maddy see in the show is a brilliant, mind-opening, and absolutely terrifying story of two teenage girls fighting unimaginable horror through the undying bond of friendship.

Schoenbrun uses layers of nostalgia in her filmmaking to connect you to the ever-expanding lore of memory, television, and mundanity Owen and Maddy face on a daily basis. The visual language of the film is defined by the glowing neon tones of 90s children television, specifically focusing on opposing forces of pink and green to separate television from reality. The slightly-blurry filters and hand drawn title cards and annotations look like home movies shot on VHS. The Pink Opaque has all the artifacting of small color TV sets, offering a clear-enough distinction between reality and fiction. As time progresses, the quality of camera and style of effects progresses, too.

I Saw the TV Glow is an unapologetically queer coming of age story. Owen isn’t one hundred percent sure of who he is interested in, or if he is interested in anyone at all. In a particularly poignant scene after watching the latest episode of The Pink Opaque, Owen admits that when he thinks about if he’s attracted to someone that he just gets confused and essentially starts intellectualizing the nature of the relationship. While he doesn’t have the language for his experience due to his isolated upbringing, it is quite likely that Owen is describing the aromantic/asexual experience in some way. Many of us who grow up feeling broken because the idea of attraction feels like a choice to be analyzed discover that we are somewhere on the aro/ace spectrum later in life; meaning, we either don’t feel romantic attractions (aromantic), sexual attractions (asexual), or neither (aromantic asexual) towards anyone. Maddy, herself an out lesbian, tries to reassure Owen that he’ll figure things out, though she herself feels more secure in their friendship knowing that Owen is only able to see their relationship as a friendship.

The situation becomes even more unclear as the two begin to reconcile with the reality of their world and the world of The Pink Opaque. The pair see each other in the leading roles on the show, which forces Owen to confront not just his concept of sexuality but his gender identity. While not discussed as directly as the concept of attraction, the shifting layers of reality changes how Owen perceives himself when remembering his past with Maddy. He knows he is Owen, but he doesn’t know if Owen has always been a male-presenting person. It is rare for a horror film to so clearly delve into the cross-section of gender identity and sexuality in a way that doesn’t feel exploitative or driven by gross stereotype.

This review barely scratches the surface of what I Saw the TV Glow has to offer. This is a fantastic experiment in coming of age horror through the lens of time, nostalgia, and identity. Perhaps the greatest achievement here is perfectly encapsulating the investigative nature of the analog horror genre in a singular feature-length film.

I Saw the TV Glow is playing in theaters.