I Saw the TV Glow

I Saw the TV Glow – A Surreal Descent into Nostalgia, Identity, and Dissociation

I Saw the TV Glow, directed by Jane Schoenbrun, is a haunting, genre-defying exploration of identity, loneliness, and the eerie power of media to both reflect and distort our inner worlds. Blending coming-of-age drama with horror, surrealism, and queer allegory, the film feels less like a traditional narrative and more like a dream — or a prolonged emotional hallucination. It’s a work that speaks to anyone who’s ever looked at a glowing screen and felt both seen and alienated.

The film follows Owen (played with muted intensity by Justice Smith), a quiet teenager in the suburbs of the 1990s who finds escape in a late-night television show called The Pink Opaque — a supernatural series centered around two teen girls with psychic powers fighting darkness. Through this show, Owen connects with Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), a slightly older, more rebellious student who shares his obsession. Their shared fandom becomes a lifeline in an otherwise numbing and isolating world. But as years pass, and reality begins to fracture, the lines between the TV show, Owen’s identity, and the real world start to blur in disturbing and surreal ways.

Schoenbrun uses The Pink Opaque as a symbolic anchor — part parody of 1990s genre TV (think Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Are You Afraid of the Dark?), part mirror to Owen’s repressed sense of self. The show becomes a surrogate for a world of possibility: of queer expression, emotional truth, and liberation — all the things Owen cannot find in his mundane, detached life. But as adulthood sets in, and the show fades from existence, so does Owen’s grip on time, selfhood, and reality.

Stylistically, I Saw the TV Glow is a triumph of mood and atmosphere. With dreamy neon lighting, VHS textures, and an eerie, analog-heavy score by Alex G, the film evokes both nostalgia and dread in equal measure. Time seems to warp in the film — months pass like minutes, and years disappear in a blink — reflecting the dissociative experience of living with an unacknowledged or suppressed identity. Schoenbrun captures the terror of disconnection in a way that’s deeply personal but also culturally resonant, particularly for queer audiences who grew up without clear mirrors in media.

Justice Smith’s performance is quietly devastating, portraying Owen as a soul sleepwalking through life, his repression palpable in every glance and silence. Brigette Lundy-Paine, by contrast, is electric — a beacon of raw intensity and resistance to conformity. Their dynamic is not quite romantic, not exactly platonic, but filled with a profound ache — two people trying to decode themselves in each other’s reflection.

At its core, I Saw the TV Glow is about the unbearable tension between the self we were told to be and the self that cries out to be known. The horror isn’t jump scares or monsters — it’s the horror of time lost, identity denied, and dreams that flicker and vanish like static on a screen. It’s a film that doesn’t offer closure or clarity, but instead sits with the unresolved, the unspoken, and the inescapable.

In the end, I Saw the TV Glow is not just a film — it’s a feeling. Unsettling, beautiful, and deeply melancholic, it captures the surreal dislocation of growing up in a body that doesn’t feel like home, in a world that refuses to see you clearly. It is a love letter to the misfits who stared into a glowing screen and saw, however faintly, the shape of their own truth.