I Saw the TV Glow: 'deeply haunting' mystery drama deserves 'cult status'

To call this a horror film "seems reductive", said Wendy Ide in The Observer. "With its shapeshifting disquiet, 'I Saw the TV Glow' is too languidly weird, too unmoored from genre conventions to be neatly categorised. But there's not a frame in Jane Schoenbrun's suffocating second feature that isn't drenched in dread and unease."

Set in an American suburb in the 1990s, the story follows two misfit teens, Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), who are united in their love for a hokey, supernatural TV series called "The Pink Opaque". On every episode, two girlfriends use their telepathic powers to fight the forces of evil. Two years go by, during which Maddy and Owen's obsession with the show only grows – then Maddy, who is being abused by her stepfather, mysteriously vanishes. "The film has a trans/queer subtext, but it will speak to anyone who has ever felt uncomfortable in their own skin."

Schoenbrun's no-budget 2021 debut "We're All Going to the World's Fair" "made a brilliant impression", said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. The director's new film is "deeply scary, deeply strange and deeply sad" – a "claustrophobic, unwholesome" triumph that "deserves cult status".

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"Visceral and intensely moving, this film feels like something you'd stumble across on TV in the small hours and never forget," said Laura Venning in Empire.

It is "deeply haunting" and has a very "distinctive style", said Nick Howells in the London Evening Standard. But it's properly "gloomy", right down to the miserable score. Some viewers may find it just too much of a "downer".