FILM OF THE WEEK: I Saw the TV Glow

2024 may have its new cinematic masterpiece. Queer filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun follows up their debut We’re All Going To The World’s Fair with this incredible film that exists between reality, dreams and nightmares, using '90s nostalgia to capture the struggle of two characters desperately trying to hold themselves in, in order to survive Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell-era American suburbia.

Schoenbrun has explained that the film was inspired by their own ‘egg crack’; the moment when a trans or non-binary person realises they cannot be contained by the confining shell of cis gender norms. While holding a powerful trans allegory, all fans of cinema should appreciate the beauty, artistry and deep emotion of I Saw The TV Glow, which feels destined to become a cult classic, but deserves wider recognition.

Starting in the '90s, Ian Foreman and then Justice Smith play Owen, a young Black high-schooler who floats through his suburban school and homelife in an almost dissociative state, disconnected from everyone around him. That is until he meets prickly emo loner Maddie, a slightly older student who seems to understand Owen’s self-protective shell.

As their parents gear up to vote for Bill Clinton’s shallow promises of progressivism, both are aware that they don’t fit the All American dream of what a teenager should be – but neither do their home lives. Maddy is lesbian and possibly non-binary, and the father who wants a more “normal” daughter regularly beats her. Owen, one of the only Black students at his school, is less sure of his identity, just internalising the idea that his inability to assimilate to the conventional and claustrophobic gender norms swirling around him marks him as broken.

“What about you? Do you like girls?” Maddy asks Owen on the school bleachers. “I don’t know,” Owen replies. “Boys?” presses Maddy. “I think I like TV shows,” delivers Smith. “When I think about that stuff, I feel like someone took a shovel and dug out my insides. I know there’s nothing there, but I’m still too nervous to open myself up to check.”

Unable to connect to the people around them, Maddy and Owen instead gravitate towards Pink Opaque, a TV show featuring two telepathic girls who defeat a monster of the week, building up towards confronting their world’s main villain, Mr.Melancholy. Pink Opaque – the title referencing the pink of the body that conceals the true person inside – is kitschy and unnerving, taking inspiration from Buffy, Goosebumps and Are You Afraid Of The Dark? 

Those shows toyed with darkness and introduced teens to the ideas of monsters, empowerment, and treacherous worlds their peers and parents were blissfully unaware of. When Maddy suddenly disappears and Pink Opaque is cancelled, Owen is left to for himself – but much like the show’s heroines, his link with Maddie transcends space, and the two reunite just as they both need to face their inner Big Bad.

The style of Pink Opaque – which Schoenbrun shot a lot of, to make it feel cohesive – has strong stylistic flourishes that echo  throughout the film, blurring the lines between what is real and what is not, creating a dreamlike space where everything feels like a memory. Shot in flared neon (the bisexual lighting is strong in this one) where pauses are long, fantastical imagery flashes, details are slightly off, and TV static sometimes radiates from Maddy and Owen’s bodies, I Saw The TV Glow sinks its teeth into your subconscious, often feeling like a time-warped drug trip, but always fuelled with emotion.

Its hair-splintering sound design, meanwhile, creates a sense of melancholic, Lynchian unease. Songs from Broken Social Scene and synth static inspire '90s nostalgia and a deep sense of longing – for the past, for more time, for a future that does not exist yet. As Owen’s connection to the TV heightens, it becomes unclear which world will trap him more; that inside the small screen or the one outside it.

Haunting, beautiful, audacious and utterly intoxicating, I Saw The TV Glow will suck you right in. How and whether you emerge is up to you.

• In Cinemas now. Watch the trailer below.