I Saw The TV Glow [Movie review]

I Saw The TV Glow required me to step back and re-examine my approach to this kind of story. As much as I grow to hate the entirety of Film Twitter, it has been fascinating to watch the responses. So many are willing to bend over backwards to crown the next new flavor of the month. But, I Saw The TV Glow tries to do something that matters more than something like Challengers. It wants to speak the youthful desire of escaping mundane existence for the fantasy that lies just beyond the border.

The impact of Creepypasta on the younger generation

Analog vs. Digital has become this undercurrent to a great many things for people of the two prominent generations. I think it has something to do with Millennials and Zoomers being experience deep in the push into more Digital First platforms. Yet, I Saw The TV Glow understands the weird underpinnings of nostalgia for a media age where things were harder to consume. That last gasp of appointment television and bonding with local friends over shared interests. All the while, adults and authority figures looked upon you wondering why you even care about a show, a thing, a band or whatever it was in that moment.

The Pink Opaque is the pop culture thing that brings together our two leads Owen and Maddy. They bond and share their feelings about the show, as one kid gets to act on what the show means to them and another has to stay grounded in reality. Things ramp up when Maddy finds a way to stay in the world of The Pink Opaque and asks Owen to come with her. The results of said decision feel like an existential Creepypasta of which the deepest Subreddits couldn’t birth.

Creeypastas for the litany of “olds” that read this site are internet/tech artifact based ghost stories that function like Black Mirror for those of that are still in Tales from the Crypt style mindsets. So when you watch the film for the first time and the Luna Juice starts vomiting at you, keep that in mind. But, don’t overlook the real thing hinging this story together.

Internet Culture meets Nihilistic Zeitgeist

A Zoomer, a Gen Alpha and a Millennial walk into a bar. The boomer bartender yells at them for bringing a kid into a bar. The kid refuses to leave. The cops are called and the kid gets assaulted, but manages to livestream the entire incident while the Millennial and Zoomer watch on their phones. Our plucky Alpha kid sues and wins, the bar closes and the trio move to a new area for their next adventure.

It’s not quite Pagliacci, but the point is in this instance the clown doesn’t care anymore. If there was any humor left in this dour world, A24 would have boomer only screenings for I Saw The TV Glow. Let them sit in audiences of their like-minded fellows and observe a movie that is so beyond them that it’s apropos to broadcasting Cosmos to bacteria. I would love to see the new elderly watch in fear as their generation has the same reaction that their parents had to Easy Rider and 2001: A Space Odyssey signalling an end to their fingerprints on pop culture.

But, am I saying that I Saw The TV Glow is at that level of importance? Of course not. There are no hypebeasts here. However, you would have to be dim not to see and understand what director Jane Schoenbrun has laid down in I Saw The TV Glow. Somewhere between the shades of Ellison and the splash of Cronenberg and Cheever and a bit more Perry, the reality of the tale sits in for those paying attention. The spirit of the times is nothing matters because the system is broken and they’re getting ready to leave your ass behind.

It’s The Swimmer for Internet Youth That Feel The Need to Interject

I own four copies of The Swimmer motion picture and three copies of the book. It’s not something I consciously embarked on doing, but here I am years later. Much like the media fascination that kicks off the events of I Saw The TV Glow, there has always been this fascination with escaping the malaise of suburbia. Some people can do it, others can’t do it. But everyone has an opinion on how do it. What’s fascinating is how the film stages Maddy’s character as a temporal returning point for Owen to either make the move or get left beyond.

Outside of classic horror, we rarely see that. I’m talking Classic as in the 19th century sense not in whatever you believe is Classic Horror in 2024. The epistolary tales of true horror witnessed by a survivor and then regaled to audiences as half warning and half longing for something above the mundane. What makes the initial discovery between Owen and Maddy so scary is that Maddy spends years giving Owen the chance to be in her world. Even with his forgotten Harkonnen relative looking father Frank, Owen can’t pick and choose between the least scariest of the realities.

Eventually, Owen agrees to be buried alive as a way of entering the new world that Maddy has teased him with and she has grown beyond him. As much as Owen hates his existence, he can’t agree to end it for the promise of something better. Maddy steps a toe into the other world first before finally committing to a better life on her own. All the while, Owen waits to see if it was worth the trip.

Death Cults are Quite A Concept

Since we’re all victims of the narratives that swim about us in our over-connected world, we recognize patterns that emerge. When Maddy shows Owen the way to a better life is by allowing himself to be buried alive, he hesitates. The primal urge for self preservation that so many of the living can’t push down is a tricky thing. It’s not about the desire to be alive, so much as it is in not being willing to confront the unknown. After all, the end is the end. There are no Season 6s, no more things to make appointments to watch and definitely nothing more to bond with others over.

It’s just over. But in rejecting that finality, you also have to deal with the road not taken. I Saw The TV Glow lives in those moments in a way that might feel a little Donnie Darko to some. There’s more going on here than some Richard Kelly ties, but even the Southland Tales director was tapping into a similar vibe. Donnie Darko in his film was all about trying to figure out why the world couldn’t keep him in it. Maddy isn’t quite so terminal, but understands the similar mechanisms that can provide freedom.

Owen sees this as a first-party observer, but he can’t make that commitment. In a greater sense, Owen is way truer to form real person than anyone else presented here. Even the Captain Hook coded Mr. Melancholy lacks the definition that comes with a liberal dose of reality. But, how does that explain Owen’s final steps?

Fantasy is the weapon of children, but the excuse of adults

When people get into modern arguments about heavy subjects, they’re quick to devalue traditional structures to the point of turning any conversation into mush. Much like how children count higher and higher until some nerd yells out “Infinity Plus 1”, there’s always someone try to one-up to win. At the heart of I Saw The TV Glow is this look at how we perceive fantasy. Those that succumb to its appeal as kids and those that deny it but long for it in their adulthood. But, much like Fred Durst’s Frank, those who reject it or seemingly sickened by not being able to process it.

Luna juice could be anything, but what it represents the vile nonsense one generation spills onto another to keep them within certain boundaries. Much like in the 1960s world of Spider-Man comics, all adults seem to be existing in another world and not able to partake in the Amazing Fantasy that the young people get to experience. They’re aging, sick, might be dying and eventually that mess contaminates the younger people that can’t escape whether into the Pink Opaque or elsewhere.

Those final images of I Saw The TV Glow will stick with the right people for ages, but it will leave the older viewers cold. I’d like to say it had more of an impact on me than it did, but I guess I’m at a different point in my life. That’s fine and I do want to come back to the film after some time to evaluate my final feelings on I Saw The TV Glow. But for now, I will say I’m pretty impressed with the director’s narrative growth.

I Saw The TV Glow has now gone wide to a theater near you.