I Saw the TV Glow (2024)
Directed by Jane Schoenbrun
In late-90s suburbia, a lonely teenager meets a girl at school who introduces him to a mysterious late-night T.V. show — a vision of a supernatural world pulsing beneath their own. As time goes on, however, questions begin to arise about why the show sometimes seems more real than their own lives. In the pale glow of the television, their view of reality begins to crack.
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3 films that influenced I Saw the TV Glow
What critics say influenced I Saw the TV Glow
There are some echoes of “Poltergeist” (1982) but “I Saw the TV Glow” is less a horror movie, and more of a meditation on conveying the existential crisis that tons of people feel in their isolated corners of the world that have no place for anyone who is different, cannot stick to the norms, felt suffocated and never felt at home with their family or in their native town so they had to run away or stayed and died slowly.
The television set has a proud place in horror history as a conduit to various twilight zones: think of Heather O’Rourke silhouetted by static in Poltergeist, or James Woods being hungrily devoured by the screen in Videodrome, or the dripping, dark-haired wraith from The Ring, arms bent and splayed as she crawls inexorably into the third dimension.
What separates it from other “high school outcasts in a ‘throwback’ setting” narratives (including Donnie Darko, which it’s now frequently been compared to) is the trans nature of it.
As this is an A24 film, it’s hard not to think of other daring films that border on horror, like last year’s Beau Is Afraid, which are almost unbelievable in their ambition and concepts.
There's a lot of Charlie Kaufman in these scenes, and some of the fatalism that made Ari Aster's Beau Is Afraid so tough to swallow.