A24's Film 'I Saw The TV Glow' Is A Surreal Meditation On Friendship And Fandom

To an outsider, the realm of fandom, whether it be for movies, comic books, anime, horror, sci-fi, or television shows, can be a strange landscape to traverse. The levels of veneration some fans have for their favorite intellectual properties often reach pseudo-religious levels (hence the terms ‘cult classic’ or ‘cult show’), with behaviors that sometimes amuse—or perplex—more casual consumers of entertainment. But for those involved in fandom, the cosplaying and convention-attending, the website devotionals and social media fan pages are ways to express just how important a movie or comic or television show can become to many people, and how potent the shared fan experience can be.

That shared experience lies at the heart of the A24 film I Saw The TV Glow, a somber, strange, sometimes surreal meditation on fandom, friendship, and the nature of reality. The movie begins in 1996, when socially isolated seventh-grader Owen (Ian Foreman) meets Maddy (Jack Haven, credited as Brigette Lundy-Paine), a sulky, older Goth loner whose sole joy is the new teen horror television show, The Pink Opaque. After Owen sneaks out to Maddy’s house to watch the latest episode with her, the two bond over their mutual obsession with the show. Two years later, Maddy and Owen (now played by Justice Smith), have persisted with their unconventional relationship despite the tribulations in Owen’s life: his mother has passed away from cancer, and his layabout couch-potato dad ((Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst, in a boldly unrecognizable role) completely ignores him, leaving Owen to delve deeper into The Pink Opaque’s fantasy world. When Owen declines Maddy’s plea to run away from their repressive small town with her, she disappears, having burned her television in protest of The Pink Opaque’s abrupt fifth-season cancellation.

Nearly a decade later, Owen endures a drab existence, living with his father and working at the local movie theater when Maddy suddenly returns one evening, claiming that she and Owen are actually the protagonists of The Pink Opaque who have been exiled to a pocket universe disguised as suburbia by the show’s reality-warping antagonist. Maddy wants Owen to return with her to the fantastic realm within the show to reclaim their heroic mantles in the new season, yet Owen rebuffs her, thinking she’s lost her mind. But has she? Or is his bland workaday hell really just a construct created to keep him from resuming his true destiny?

I Saw The TV Glow captivates in many ways: the acting is pitch-perfect, and writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s ability to evoke the time period—assisted by composer Alex G’s minimalist synthwave score—is consistently on-point. On a surface level the movie can be interpreted as a rumination on the effects of fandom, yet deeper themes addressing loneliness, autism, sexuality, and identity reflect Schoenbrun’s personal journey as a transgender filmmaker. Though plenty of unconventional narrative weirdness occurs during the movie’s 100 minute run time (including, but not limited to, Owen’s fourth-wall breaking asides, and the squiggly neon doodles that occasionally fill the screen), an aching earnestness lies beneath the surface, one that embraces all the attentive awkwardness, not just of youth, but life in general. One notable moment comes early in the film, after Maddy inquires if Owen likes girls or boys. “I-I don’t know,” Owen stutters in reply. “I like TV shows.”

The (fictional) TV show at the center of Maddy and Owen’s universe, The Pink Opaque, is styled after late-‘90’s WB network fare like Charmed and, more intentionally, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Following the adventures of Isabel and Tara, two teens who use their psychic connection to battle the show’s super-creepy supervillain, Mr. Melancholy, The Pink Opaque scenes (cleverly captured on 35mm film and later transferred to VHS to reproduce the late-twentieth century analog look), and casting of Amber Benson—who played witch Tara Maclay for three seasons on Buffy—in a cameo role, will evoke nostalgia for a time not too long ago when such shows impressed themselves upon the collective psyche of the Millennial generation.

Yet for all that it does right, I Saw The TV Glow isn’t a perfect film. The pace drags, and both Owen and Maddy, while serviceable figures within the story’s framework, often feel too obviously like Schoenbrun’s stand-in ciphers rather than fully-fleshed out, three-dimensional characters in their own right. The final fifteen minutes, too, are the stuff of anticlimax, and the movie’s ultimate resolution may alienate viewers seeking hard-set answers to all that’s come before.

Sometimes disappointing, occasionally baffling, but never lacking in originality or inventiveness, I Saw The TV Glow works best as a reminder that art, in any medium, retains the power to transform its audience in primal and profound ways, and as such earns a solid 3.5 (out of 5) on my Fang Scale. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to dust off my Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVD’s for a binge watch. Grrr...arrgh!