I Saw "I Saw the TV Glow"

Jane Schoenbrun's latest film, "I Saw the TV Glow" occupies similar real estate as her directing debut, "We're All Going to the World's Fair."  Once again, we're in the realm of disaffected, disconnected youth, living out their lives in front of eerie glowing screens.  This time, instead of internet creepypasta, Maddy (Brigett Lundy-Paine) and Owen (Justice Smith) are obsessed with a YA supernatural television series called "The Pink Opaque."  7th grader Owen starts watching the show because he wants to be friends with 9th grader Maddy, whose behavior is obsessive and erratic.  He witnesses her parasocial relationship with "The Pink Opaque" turn into something sinister and terrifying as they grow up and become adults.

"I Saw the TV Glow"  was intended by Schoenbrun to be a transgender allegory, which makes sense in light of the body horror, the alienated young characters, and the existential themes.  However, the experience of watching the film without knowing the director's intentions still offers plenty to chew on.  Owen and Maddy's lives are depressing and bleak, and Owen has a lot of trouble communicating with other people, including his parents.  The images the kids see on their screens are frequently horrific, and the characters in the fictional stories all seem to meet with terrible ends, but perhaps this is preferable to their empty, zombie-like existence in the real world, where they can't do anything about the steadily compounding tragedies that continue to eat away at them.  

At times it's difficult to watch "I Saw the TV Glow" because it looks like a horror film, but doesn't behave like one.  The characters are so monotone and dead-eyed most of the time, they're difficult to connect to.  Schoenbrun favors long, long shots that sometimes tested my patience.  The scares and the dread are well-earned, building steadily throughout the film, but it isn't until about midway through the film that the story becomes truly horrific.  And even then, it's liminal David Lynchian horror, couched in layers of symbolism and surrealism.  The production of "I Saw the TV Glow" has a larger budget than "World's Fair," and features several mainstream actors, but at times feels more experimental and self-indulgent.  Some of the nightmare imagery is very impressive, with roots in shock memes straight from the internet imageboards.  I can imagine that horror fans who stumble across this film unaware of its art house bonafides would come away frustrated and confused.   

I knew what I was getting into and still came out pretty frustrated.  This is not a film that cares about being entertaining, though at times it is impressive for the depth of feeling it evokes.  The actors do a good job with extremely limited roles, especially Brigett Lundy-Paine delivering a crucial monologue.  However, I found it difficult to take the movie at face value.  I think part of the issue was the film's treatment of Owen and Maddy as media fans.  I was initially interested in how the parasocial relationship was going to be portrayed, especially upon learning that "The Pink Opaque" was heavily influenced by "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."  I was a big "Buffy" fan in my teenage and college years, and spent some time in the wilder corners of online fandom.  Owen and Maddy are shown connecting through the show, but we don't really get much of a sense of their relationship to the media itself or how they function as fans, except obliquely.  Owen doesn't seem nearly as interested in "The Pink Opaque"  as he is in Maddy, and Maddy's fixation feels like a symptom of deteriorating mental health.  However, I like that Schoenbrun makes the point that "The Pink Opaque" itself is not sinister or malevolent.  Rather, Maddy and Owen's projections of their own issues on the show are the main source of the horror.

"I Saw the TV Glow" is one of those movies that it's much more fun to talk about than to watch.  And I'm not sure that sorting out Maddy's terrible home life or determining what actually happened in the last episode of "The Pink Opaque" is worth the time spent watching the blank-faced characters numbly failing to connect to each other, over and over again for 100 stultifying minutes.   Jane Schoenbrun is not a mainstream filmmaker and I root for their success, but their depressive stories and internet meme aesthetics don't work for me.  This feels like "Donnie Darko" all over again, but content to stay small and surreal and for the very, very niche.  And that's where I'm going to leave it.  

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