I Saw the TV Glow

No judgment. Definitely not a traditional "horror" film, but scary none the less. I was a freshman girl in 1996. This is what it felt like.... Fighting to get to the next season of our lives. Fighting to be understood and to understand ourselves. We were in such a hurry to grow up we didn't fully appreciate our youth. Some of us didn't make it. I did and I wonder which outcome is better. We die quickly or we die slowly. This film made me feel very seen and also scared for the next generations. Some things are better and some are way worse. If we do it or not our teenage selves die... it's all about if we become something better. The question is "What is better?"

It features many dynamite indie rockers (both in cameos and musically), it started off great with interesting characters and EXCELLENT aesthetics - as a millennial, I felt a lot of nostalgia for similar shows I used to watch growing up. Ultimately though, the story fell apart and offered little substance.

The film has an interesting and societally relevant theme, but I think that's where this falls flat - a great film may elicit the response:

"That was a great story - what were its most prominent themes?"

But instead I found myself asking:

"That was an interesting theme - what were its most prominent plot lines?"

'I Saw the TV Glow' is about a pair of middle school kids in the '90s who get a little too involved in their favorite cable TV show.

Justice Smith and Bridgette Lundy-Paine play two loners who have nothing in common except an obsession with the show "The Pink Opaque". We see vignettes from the show which is about two young girls using their super powers and telepathic connection to fight an evil villain who looks like the Man in the Moon. Apparently, this TV show has generated near 300 episodes.

The two main characters of 'Glow' don't seem to have any kind of life outside of watching 'The Pink Opaque'. Transfixed in the 'TV Glow', these two exude low energy and that's the overriding vibe of the film. Not a good thing.

The first half of 'Glow' is watchable as a vague sense of dread builds. I wondered where this was going, ready for the ride; but 'Glow' doesn't go anywhere interesting.

It's an odd little movie that approximates that moment when you're about to fall asleep with the television on.

I found the most interesting scenes to be the faux episodes of 'The Pink Opaque' with its intentionally cheesy era aesthetics.

I was thoroughly looking forward to this film but alas. The style, the cinematography and the subject matter are all well-executed and important. However, there is little to no nuisance. Any subtlety is not subtle and any message is overpowered by sub-par acting and loud, screeching, pretension.

Mysterious Skin (2006) is a film that's similar but done exceptionally better. While the subject matter is far from metaphoric, it's execution is brilliant. I Saw The TV Glow seems like a proof of concept with a powerful core message that had the glaring plot gaps filled with flashing visuals and nostalgia-bait.

This should've been a Tisch short.

So... the choices in both the story and the look and overall nightmarish aesthetic of I Saw the TV Glow will likely be compared to several things by film critics and watchers more astute than I, but it makes the most sense when one discovers that Jane Schoenbrun has said in interviews and such that Twin Peaks and specifically The Return left a major impact on them. I wouldn't be surprised if they watched it over and over and (repeat 10x fast) over the past several years, and look it there are few pieces of art created for the medium of television that were as daring and unsettling and just DGAF as Lynch's electrical fire of a masterwork.

*But* and this is a big but here: taking many of the aesthetic touches and visual cues from that show doesn't automatically make a work of art meaningful. And what to see here that is not the Pink Opaque TV Show (which I'll get to)... these choices don't do it for me, to say the least.

Also one should remember that Lynch and Frost never forgot, over the original show, Fire Walk with Me and the Return, that there had to be *shown* the kinds of depravity, abuse and total horrors from the human beings in that town and elsewhere, that comes from a world where everything that seems ho-hum and banal about small town life or typical in city life (and in the case of TV Glow the Suburbia kind) are anything but when you scratch just a little below the surface. And there is no lack of an eye with this film (shot on 35mm) and it may be to a fault, but that it isn't so much what Schoenbrun remembers they loved from the Return - electrical currents, a moody band playing at a bar while our leads talk about devastating/consequential things, a parent sitting in the eerie light of a TV alone in a room- as what they leave out.

TV Glow I'm sure somewhere in Schoenbrun's conscious intention is about that, at least for the Owen and Maddy characters, who we are told and *not shown* (as the difference from Lynch's phantasmagoria), have been neglected and/or abused by their parents (or just made to feel like, at least for Owen, he or he may be they ultimately, can't be who they truly are). And I can dig a movie that is also about a disaffected and so much so one may say it's about autistic or even Asperger adolescents, ie cant look in a less-important person's eyes when talking to them, and how bonding over a wholly commanding and absorbing piece of media can feel like a second breath (and who cares about the quality when you're a kid, it's about the *world,* man). The problem for me, maybe the key problem, is that Owen and Maddie are drawn and directed to be almost parodies of disaffected youth.

I don't think it is a problem with Lundy-Paine's acting talent per say as they are giving as much as they can in the role, it is just a matter of... sorry, but, delivering this monologue in the monotone damned voice I've ever heard outside of one of the student films I used to see back in my undergrad days, is not going to cut it. But Lundy-Paine doesn't come away looking like an embarrassment. Justice Smith, on the other hand, is actively bad here, to the point where there would be times he would open his mouth and I would laugh at his delivery. I'm not sure if it is simply him or the writing or directing or all of it combined into this walking morose failure pile in a sadness bowl of a performance, and I know I have seen him be decent before (Detective Pikachu was... fine!) For this, there is nowhere for this character to go, or for us to see much in the way of a change or degradation from watching this seemingly mind-bending YA show (till arguably the last couple of scenes, hoo boy), so Smith is one tone from minute one till nearly the last. Awful.

But what about that Pink Opaque TV show, you might ask? This was the highlight of the movie for me, and mostly because it's where I could sense other conscious or possibly unconscious creative influences from Schoenbrun's youth forming into this parodic stew - and mine and my wife's as well, she came to this knowing about the Buffy influence by the way and it was obvious where it shows (Amber Benson cameo notwithstanding). It's genuinely entertaining to see these set pieces from the show unfold, from the grotesque and cheesy monsters to the "Mr Menancholy" Big-Bad of this concoction. While I wished we saw more of the show in the film, it was still not the problem of missing Maddie's father as a character or mostly Owen's mother. What we see of the Pink Opaque is cheesy and silly and crazy and, for a 90s kid, pretty spot on to a myriad of kid-leaning shows.

The sad and frustrating part of watching this film is that I can see a lot of the potential of the ideas here, and I absolutely get why this is connecting with/for LGBTQI (or autistic/mentally ill). At the same time, and this is just my take and take my basic Cis white guy take with a grain of salt if you must, I didn't think the film goes that deep enough into the Trans allegory; Owen clearly is not at ease with himself (if again he is a he), and the idea could be interesting that perhaps the infatuation with a show aimed assumedly at a young traditionally female demographic opens a lock inside his consciousness or self awareness. That... doesn't happen, maybe at the final couple of scenes with that moment in the bathroom, kind of?

But the drama is so... well, Opaque as a tone throughout this picture that I never got much of any humanity anyway here. Even with Owen and Maddie's bond over the show, it leaves them in a trance state, which ok fine, but a) that never leads to anything that is that satisfying as a *horror* movie, or where it would make any reasonable sense, ie its years and years later to find out what the show has done to Maddie's mind (and good lord was this mismarketed as that to the Nth degree), and b), if they were so all-consumed by this show where it dominated their lives and so on, it never extends to, say, seeing what the rest of the cult around this show is like? Or even if it is just the two of them taking this show as gospel, then no one else in the world (or as something that existed circa late 90s, the Internet and fan forums) is there as a reaction to say "hey its all just silly girl-power Mr Frostee evil-moon-man fun"?

Or maybe the whole film is supposed to function more on the artful vibes and symbolism. Again, going back to my Twin Peaks and Lynch flag-pole, for all of the doggedly and unflappable weirdness of that world, there was always some real people or things that the weirdness could play off of. There's barely anything like that here- asshole co-workers who get like a minute of time don't count- and oddly enough the whole film mostly ends up feeling like a stitched together series of a supporting character arc from a long running show where everything else that is normal has been edited out. And all that we are left with is... Owen.

I want to make something else abundantly clear: I think it's awesome to make a film that stands as a Trans allegory! Go for it, Trans people and non-Binary folks are great just like all other (non asshole) people out there, and if all the Genre influences and self conscious winks and nods to 90s ephemera was the way to make this unique for you, more power to you. I think in the abstract it is wonderful that a decidedly and markedly uncanny film is playing in multiplexes and will affect some kids (and adults) who find this moving.

Yet I Saw the TV Glow is as a piece of executed material such a pretentious boondoggle, a character study where the characters are so withdrawn as to be sucked into a near black hole on the ass of Mr Melancholy, featuring casting choices for Owen from age 12 to 14 that just kills the soul, and it's all the more remarkable given how Schoenbrun's previous directorial debut, We're All Going to the World's Fair, dealt with societal isolation and disaffection and media manipulation in an exciting and satisfyingly strange collage of moments (also with its own context). I left the theater in a daze and laughing to myself; this is never boring, I'll give it that. It's too much of a WHAT IS THIS experience to leave before it ends.

And then when it does it... ended. No season 6. Sigh.