★★★★1/2

Perhaps THE film of the 50th SIFF Film Festival and a film quickly becoming one of the most buzzworthy films of 2024, Jane Schoenbrun’s genre-defying I Saw the TV Glow is part drama, dark comedy, psychological horror and a deeply personal look at understanding and embracing who you are. Admittedly, I didn’t know what to make of TV Glow as the credits appeared on screen. In the time that has passed since watching it, I cannot stop thinking about the film and likewise cannot wait to see it again.

As a follow-up to the 2022 film We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, Schoenbrun has stated that these two films represent their journey in realizing their gender identity. With TV Glow, we see the coming-of-age and maturation of a quiet seventh grader named Owen, who strikes up a friendship with 9th grader Maddy. Bonding over the teen television series, “The Pink Opaque,” they become close friends, though a series of events through the years will eventually drive them apart. 

When fate brings Owen and Maddy back together years later (played with awkward, pained believability by Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine, respectively), a series of discoveries and realizations begin to take place. As the film digs deeper, characters break the fourth wall. What is believed to exist merely within a fictionalized television show may in fact appear outside of the small screen in a different realm of reality. As Owen grows older and struggles to understand what is happening around him, and better understand what Maddy shares with him, he also struggles to build a meaningful relationship with his widowed father, played by an almost unrecognizable Fred Durst of the 1990s rap/rock band Limp Bizkit.

Schoenbrun is a filmmaker we should not ignore any longer. Watching Schoenbrun’s approach to storytelling is finding ourselves exploring the worlds they have created, often alongside characters at the same time. With World’s Fair and TV Glow, the landscapes created are unsettling, but we are pushed and nudged along to complete the journey Schoenbrun wants us to experience. For some, the atmosphere can be overwhelming and perhaps too tough to follow in the abstract. But once most viewers settle into the cadence and rhythm of a Schoenbrun film, there is not anyone telling such deeply personal stories this distinctively. 

I Saw the TV Glow, powered by an alt-rock/alt-pop soundtrack you absolutely should be listening to on a loop whether you have seen the film or not, is a movie experience audiences are starting to talk about, created by a director who seems to be two-to-three moves ahead of everyone else right now. As a true exploration of what it means to be seen, with Schoenbrun’s own journey represented in a vast array of colors and visual elements both displayed prominently and in ways more subtle, I Saw the TV Glow is a movie that proudly and defiantly stands apart from its peers and exists as a singularly beautiful creation. And as the film finds a wider audience, here’s hoping all those who experience it recognize the same is true about themselves.

I Saw the TV Glow was screened as part of the 50th Seattle International Film Festival.