I Saw the TV Glow

But as mood and vibe overtake plot and story, the feeling "I Saw the TV Glow" evokes is often stiff and expressionless, even as its visuals are drenched in intoxicating neon blues and greens.

A mystery where the answers are inside the main character, they just don't know where to look — a movie that's a bit hard to unlock on first viewing. Yet once the full scope of the story becomes clear, its themes have a powerful impact on the viewer.

Like their first film, 2021′s internet-spiked horror We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, I Saw the TV Glow is a film of mirrors and trap doors. It is just as much about identity as it is obsession.

I Saw the TV Glow is one of the best films about identity I’ve ever seen.

At times I’m not sure I fully understood it. But I’m sure that I won’t forget it.

In every magnificent musical choice and moving monologue, a flood of meaning is bursting free.

[I Saw the TV Glow's] vision is topped only by obviously deliberate execution... [but] it's a nearly inscrutable metaphor hidden beneath miles of 90s pop-art symbolism. It both asks too much of its audience while offering too few rewards for the effort.

The horror is within the idea that when we flee from banality, we escape from everything else that might make life rich and complex.


If David Lynch decided to make a movie about teen angst and alienation, it might have looked a bit like Jane Schoenbrun’s bizarre psychological horror entry, “I Saw the TV Glow.”

Videodrome but make it Vaporwave