by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $20.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman
Intro:
It is beautiful, it is terrifying, it is reassuring, it is uncompromising, it is transcendent, it is cringe; it simply is.
Just going to preface this by stating that, yes, while this review will argue that this film earns the whole lobster, there are some reading this who will not enjoy this film. If ‘enjoy’ is even the appropriate word. We will refrain from insinuating that those who disagree just don’t “get it” (a fancy re-wording of “there’s nothing wrong with this, there’s something wrong with you”, an elitist backhand that deserves to be removed from serious critical conversation), but from end to end, this was made for a very particular audience. You know that one friend who obsesses over an obscure genre TV show, to the point that it’s a personality trait? Or maybe the friend is you?
Beginning with a pop culture bonding moment between Owen (starting with Ian Foreman, but mostly played by Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), Jane Schoenbrun’s writing and direction perfectly captures the joy of finding someone else to geek out with, particularly in the pre-Internet days. Their shared interest, the anthology kids’ horror show ‘The Pink Opaque’, is a pastiche of late-‘90s genre fare: A little bit Goosebumps, a bit Are You Afraid of the Dark, and ample amounts of Buffy, right down to the credits font. It manages to properly sell this intense fandom curio, to the point where it could legit be a nostalgia bait show running on Netflix now.
Of course, that’s just the start of it. Things soon take a turn for the Lynchian, as the line between reality and fiction starts to blur, and the two find themselves questioning who they really are. Both Lundy-Paine and Smith devour every second of their screen-time, with Maddy as the fiery queer-punk avatar and Owen as the cotton candy egg scared of a single droplet cracking his exterior.
The film’s transgender themes are explicit in all but the use of the word itself, and Schoenbrun builds on her pedigree for dissociation to create impossibly unsettling out-of-body experiences throughout. The entire film could be classified as one prolonged session of staring at yourself from above your own head. The depiction of that tier of dysphoria is immensely powerful, and already shoots this into the upper echelons of A24’s output to date… but the way that it is explored through engaging with fiction makes it resonate even outside of that specific experience.
The fear that the things we remember fondly, that defined us when we were young (and, by extension, still define us), might not actually be as we remember them… but that they’re still important. The creation of analog safe spaces for the abnormal to explore their abnormality, to recognise buried parts of themselves in people beyond what can rationally exist on our side of the screen, and become their real selves by embracing it. It crystalises why fiction, as an aspect of who we are as human beings, is vital, and why the right film, at the right time, can mean everything to the right person.
I Saw the TV Glow, despite what has already been written here and elsewhere, is beyond words. Jane Schoenbrun has crafted an essential work of Queer cinema by taking their already-pristine understanding of horror fandom (the Slender Man documentary to end all Slender Man documentaries A Self-Induced Hallucination) and the frightening liberation of escaping the confines of the body (the quarantine-core We’re All Going to the World’s Fair), and applying it not just to the Trans experience but to genre hyperfixation of all colours. It is beautiful, it is terrifying, it is reassuring, it is uncompromising, it is transcendent, it is cringe; it simply is.
