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‘I Saw the TV Glow’ Review: Jane Schoenbrun’s Eerie Ode to Adolescent Television Obsessions
Two misfit teens bond over an uncannily formative fantasy series in Jane Schoenbrun's strikingly styled not-quite-horror film 'I Saw the TV Glow.'
Though Schoenbrun realizes “The Pink Opaque” on screen in suitably glitchy, VHS-level visual terms — a clear break from the iridescent neon depths of Eric Yue’s 35mm lensing, though that choice likewise situates the film in a pre-digital context — they’re not especially interested in on-point pastiche. The show we see resembles more an early-hours pizza dream of transitional Nickelodeon fare than anything that might really have aired in the ’90s, but since we’re viewing it through the porous gaze of sensitive, unworldly teen Owen (played first by Ian Foreman, then by Justice Smith), it may already be distorted by his nervously active imagination. But as the film enters its own wormhole of fragmented reality and elasticated time and space, it becomes rather less compelling at a human level, ceding its coming-of-age narrative to an arresting maelstrom of sound and image, conducted by Schoenbrun with channel-hopping verve but increasingly wayward control.
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