Last October there were reports that someone at A24 had announced that they wanted to expand into “action and big IP projects,” a truly ominous development if true. I don’t know that I’ve heard anything more about that from them and I do hope it’s been misreported because god knows we really need the A24 we’ve already had as they’ve been a real godsend for cinema. What was that even going to mean? Would it mean they’d develop a separate shingle that would sort of be a Dimension to their Miramax? Or would it be something akin to Lionsgate going from being the distributor of movies too edgy for the major studios to being the people who do that but less boldly while also peddling The Hunger Games? We may have gotten a preview of this new A24 earlier this year with the movie Civil War, which seemed like something of a best case scenario for what this transition could look like if it happens, but they were of course already in the Alex Garland business so maybe that’s just an extension of that existing relationship. What is clear is that the old A24 is not gone yet as their latest buzzed about release, I Saw the TV Glow, is very much a product meant to appeal to their base of millennial and Gen Z hipster cineastes in that’s it’s a cool youth skewing indie from a buzzy filmmaker with some horror elements and some place in the various discourses of the day.
The film begins in 1996 and focuses in on a character named Owen (Ian Foreman, later Justice Smith), a seventh grader living in a relatively comfortable suburb but who’s extremely reserved and isolated and has rather smothering parents who overly shelter him. One day he meets a ninth grade girl named Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), who is herself disaffected but in different ways and the two bond over a shared interest in a TV show called “The Pink Opaque,” which seems to be a sort of supernatural thriller made for tween to teen audiences. The two don’t really talk a whole lot at first but Maddy does provide him with VHS tapes of the show since he usually can’t stay up late enough to watch it as it airs. Their mutual attachment to the show does seem to go beyond normal fandom however and as their friendship progresses over the years it starts to feel like they’re seeing much different things in this show than most people do and the show starts to seem like more than a show.
I’ve seen some people describe I Saw the TV Glow as a horror movie, which I don’t think is really correct or useful in setting expectations for audiences. There are a couple scenes, mainly ones involving the fictional show within the movie that do engage with the language of horror but that’s not the film’s primary mode and I wouldn’t send people to it with any expectation that they’ll get their pants scared off. The most obvious comparison I could probably make would be to something like Donnie Darko, which is another movie about teenagers in the near past facing some sort of vague supernatural situation which might be a psychological delusions and isn’t existing in a specific genre, but that movie uses less of an indie vocabulary to tell its story and for all that movie’s cryptic qualities it probably is more of a puzzle to be put together while this one is a bit more expressive and metaphoric. At the heart of it is this strange friendship between Owen and Maddy and whether there’s actually some sort of supernatural connection they’re experiencing with this TV show or if these are just two people with difficult upbringings forming a sort of codependent bond that is leading them in some delusional directions.
The fictional show at the center of all this, “The Pink Opaque,” is an interesting element of the movie in and of itself. We only get a handful of glimpses at this show, which appears to be about two teenage girls who met at summer camp and share a psychic bond and use this to fight back against monsters sent by a lunar themed villain called Mr. Melancholy. It seems like a very weird show that doesn’t seem to be inspired by any one actual 90s show. It airs on something called the “Young Adult Network” which I’m pretty sure is supposed to be an analogue to Nickelodeon given that it’s said to be the last show that airs before the switch to black and white reruns. The show also has the low budget look and feel of stuff like “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” but it’s said to have a serialized format with both “mythos” and “monster of the week” episodes like “The X-Files” and also seems to be geared more towards the teen audience of something like “Roswell.” It clearly has a the analog touches of television from that era but the basic filmmaking in the clips feels a lot more impressive and Avant-garde than anything that aired on actual 90s television outside of “Twin Peaks” in its absolute strangest moments. In keeping with the film’s central mystery around what experience these people are having with the show there is some indication that what we see of the show is filtered through the characters’ experience and that the “actual” show was shittier than what we see in the movie.
I Saw the TV Glow was directed by Jane Schoenbrun, the filmmaker who gave us We’re All Going to the World’s Fair a couple of years ago. That was a movie that was particularly interested in the internet and the effects it’s having or not having on Gen Z kids, ultimately coming to slightly ambivalent conclusions. This follow-up suggests that us millennials did not necessarily have the best relationship with the traditional analog media we were given either. That first movie intrigued me to be sure and seemed like a pretty thoughtful and forward thinking piece of work but it never quite engaged me as a piece of cinema like I wanted it to. I Saw the TV Glow is in many ways an ideal sophomore effort from Schoenbrun as it brings a lot of the ideas from that movie forward but paints on a bigger canvas provided by increased resources and takes things in a much more watchable and engaging direction. Where that previous movie felt kind of blunt and quiet bordering on invoking found footage, this movie is ethereal and nostalgic without feeling pandering and has a well-chosen soundtrack featuring mostly newly recorded songs trying to invoke a certain kind of suburban malaise and internal confusion.
Jane Schoenbrun is a trans/non-binary filmmaker and when We’re All Going to the World’s Fair came out I did see some people interpreting it as some sort of extended allegory for that experience, which I must say went right over my head if it’s there but I can probably see a bit more of those elements in this one; Owen seems to view a kindship between himself and a female character on the show in a way that’s probably pointed and deeply closeted transness would explain a lot of why the character is as uncomfortable in his own skin as he is. I would not, however, recommend limiting one’s interpretations of this movie to queer readings as there are other things going on here as well and it’s quite intentionally meant to be exist with some room for interpretation. It’s not a perfect movie necessarily and has a bit of a muddled ending that doesn’t quite bring things full circle successfully, which is maybe the point but which is a bit unsatisfying none the less. Outside of that though this is a pretty big win; exactly the kind of thing we want an emerging director to do and exactly the kind of thing we want A24 to get behind.
**** out of Five
The Movie Vampire 