I Saw the TV Glow

MOVIE #1,921 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 08.22.24 I feel like I wanted to like this more than I actually did, and I’m really struggling to formulate articulate thoughts as to why (and on the film in general, honestly) — sometimes, you just gotta take that L, I guess (at least for the time being). It’s a film that’s somehow both impossibly expansive and experimentally transient. I Saw the TV Glow is an unknowable object that’s also, in turn, about the experience of, in Schoenburn’s own words “the tension between the space that you exist within, which feels like home, and the simultaneous terror and liberation of understanding that that space might not be able to hold you in your true form.” The describer Lynchian often gets thrown about wrongly, but this embodies what that means to me perfectly: a strange artifact I might never totally ‘get’ but am still completely drawn to. I’ll be thinking about this for a long time and will definitely revisit it again.

The attention to detail especially in all the fictional shows within the film are great, as well as all the passing ephemera in the background and foreground. Still, I think it’s a messy film that teeters the line between perfection and total self-indulgence (there are worse spaces to exist, obviously). I’m not sure how I felt about some of the fourth wall breaks and monologuing, specifically. But this is still a must-watch 2024 movie. Also, Fred Durst and Conner O'Malley are in this and that was a wonderful surprise.

The big message didn't hit home for me, but it wasn't made for me — and that’s fine. It reminded me of The Songwriter scene in Under the Silver Lake (i.e., getting a message that wasn't intended for me). I also think that's the perfect antithesis to the themes here in a way. (Don’t ask me to elaborate on that!)

One last fun fact: I watched most of this thinking the lead was Will Smith's son LOL (that's Jaden not Justice and I guess they look a little alike?). That definitely impacted my viewing tbh! I'm an idiot.

UPDATE: Bumping this to a 9/10 — it has stuck with me in a beautiful way and I want to revisit it soon.

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I Saw the TV Glow is a 2024 American horror drama film written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun. It stars Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine as two troubled high school students whose connection to their favorite television show drives them to question their reality and identities. The supporting cast includes Helena Howard, Lindsey Jordan, Conner O'Malley, Emma Portner, Ian Foreman, Fred Durst, and Danielle Deadwyler. It was released on May 17, 2024.