Time to kick off 2025’s natterings with a title I recently managed to finally catch after having my eye on it for some time—coming in from A24 and director Jane Schoenbrun, I was happy to find out there was indeed more than just what’s on screen with I Saw The TV Glow.
I must admit the title and poster alone caught my interest, with marketing promising a personal story set in a quasi-nostalgic framework—you might think it’s a Stranger Things type deal that happens to be set in the nineties, and while some of the early parts sort of lean in that direction, it veers off on its own weirder and far more personally focused course. Most of the story follows socially awkward teenager Owen (Justice Smith), starting off in the Clinton years, as he does manage to find a bond with fellow social outcast Maddy (brigette lundy-paine) over their favorite TV show, The Pink Opaque. Said show is seemingly an amalgamation of things like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Power Rangers, and Goosebumps—the Buffy allusions are drawn to when we further get into how Maddy relates to the show.
Things for a bit seem to be somewhat less upbeat teenager friendships until the film starts to take an altogether different turn—as we follow Owen getting older and how eventually both his past and his memories catch up to him, except as is often with memories, you can’t always be sure if they were absolutely how you recall them. This is where the film takes the idea of a nostalgic throwback and starts to completely twist it around.
How so? Well, without spoiling too much, what I really liked here is how the themes and story beats work regardless of how you choose to interpret things, as we’re left unsure just how completely at face value to take things. If we take it all literally, it works as a story about trying to deny who you are—and it’s not surprising that now we get into the transgender allegories that are very much deliberate as the director will tell you. If you take it as at least partially subjective from our characters, it still works as a warning to not get yourself trapped in cycles of the past, and to take control of your life one way or another.
Don’t expect a very happy tone—but it is nevertheless something that’ll strike you, and those dramatic and disturbing moments do work pretty darn well, with me quite happily watching along for every turn it takes. For every surreal glimpse you’re left wondering what’s real and not, or whether the characters themselves are too sunk into their favorite story on the screen.
And that’s the most important thing—as awkward as Owen is, you do root for them on some level, and it makes the ending hit all the more harder. So, that leaves me safely reporting that this one did not disappoint—as much as a lot of media these days likes to reach back to the past, this is one that does that while doing something genuinely new with it. Give it a watch, and see what you get out of it—there’s certainly plenty to discuss…
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