Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 100 minutes
Release Date: May 3rd, 2024 (USA)
Studio: A24
Director(s): Jane Schoenbrun
Writer(s): Jane Schoenbrun

I’m still too nervous to open myself up and check.

What is “The Pink Opaque”? Twelve-year-old Owen’s (Ian Foreman) interest is piqued whenever he catches the commercials for this strange television show that caps off the Young Adult Network’s Saturday night programming, but he never dares to wonder since he’ll never be able to watch it. Bedtime is 10:00. The show airs at 10:30. His mother (Danielle Deadwyler) would let him stay up, but it’s not her call to make. If Owen desires anything, it’s his father (Fred Durst) who decides. And since the answer is almost invariably “No,” he’s stopped asking. The best shot he has to do anything is if Mom asks on his behalf.

That all changes on election day 1996. While waiting for his mother to finish commiserating with the other adults, Owen stumbles upon an older student reading a “definitive episode guide” of the show. The simple fact that he’s heard of it is what finally gets Maddy’s (Brigette Lundy-Paine) attention, even if his admission of only seeing the commercials quickly erases her enthusiasm. Owen does wish he could watch it, though. And, being that it’s such a seminal part of Maddy’s existence, she can’t help but offer an avenue to help him. “The Pink Opaque” soon provides them a secret society of two—an escape from their struggles through fiction, fantasy, and the supernatural.

Writer/director Jane Schoenbrun’s inspirations for this show are obvious. Think “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” through the warped filter of David Lynch if “Twin Peaks” the show took on the more hellish tone of Fire Walk With Me. (I still maintain that “The Return” isn’t really “Twin Peaks” at all.) Its inclusion in I Saw the TV Glow isn’t solely about aesthetic or nostalgia, though. Its purpose is much more personal than that. Because despite not quite knowing it at the time, Schoenbrun talks about using shows like “Buffy” as a way to dissociate from her life. Only after transitioning has she looked back and seen how that fiction and her fandom allowed her to leave reality behind and find her true self on the other side of the screen.

There are so many nods to this being a coming out film with a pointedly trans lens whether obvious (Dad chastising Owen’s interest in “The Pink Opaque” by calling it a “girls’ show”) or subtle (an older Owen, now played by Justice Smith, narrating his life to the camera as though he is outside himself). And then there’s the idea that he is actually one of the characters in the show named Isabel (Helena Howard). Because just like Schoenbrun wielded television as a means of leaving her body, the film asks both Owen and Maddy to literally do the same on-screen. It posits the question that maybe the two of them didn’t just watch “The Pink Opaque,” but that they remembered it. That they are Isabel and Tara (Lindsey Jordan) trapped in the Midnight Realm by Mr. Melancholy’s (Emma Portner) man in the moon.

Schoenbrun uses I Saw the TV Glow’s supernatural horror underpinnings centered on a teenager trapped inside an invisible prison built to keep him from discovering the truth as a way to deliver her devastating coming-out tale to a mainstream audience. Because Owen’s fear in believing and terror towards leaving “reality” behind isn’t fantasy. His reality is a lie that society has been built to maintain so that he can never become his true self. The narrating. The idea that time is passing like years in seconds to the point of feeling like death is always on the horizon despite everyone else looking the same. It’s all physical manifestations of what closeted queer kids deal with in their minds as they attempt to exist in a world that isn’t quite right.

And if you thought We’re All Going to the World’s Fair was evidence of a formally talented filmmaker creating haunting imagery that will stick with you long after the credits end, Schoenbrun has somehow leveled up to the point of making that low budget darling seem quaint by comparison. The monster-of-the-weeks in “The Pink Opaque” are only the tip of the iceberg too. There’s a scene where a character is desperately trying to enter their television screen with sparks flying and screams blaring that might just prove to be the most unforgettable cinematic moment of the year. Add a killer soundtrack and brilliant 90s-era production design and there are zero flaws to be found.

No matter how good it looks or how inventive the script is at bringing its metaphor to life, though, it still needs Smith and Lundy-Paine to deliver the goods. Their Maddy is guarded to the point of being cold with Owen, but only because she’s been burned countless times before. Once she can trust that his interest in her and the show is authentic, she opens up without fully losing the awkward sense of uncertainty that comes with being somewhere she doesn’t belong. And his Owen—soft-spoken and downtrodden—comes alive when he’s watching the television. Not in some over-the-top comical way. Just via a wide-eyed wonder and excitement towards the possibilities that await him if he’s willing to jump into the abyss.

And just because the film seems destined to be one full of regret, don’t ignore the power of the words “There is still time” that grace the screen as chalk on asphalt. Maybe he’s not ready to escape the sense of dysphoria that eats away at him right now. Maybe he won’t be later either. But there’s still time. Even when the memories of vividly nightmarish adventures on the other side of the TV screen fade to reveal shoddy craftsmanship and corny dialogue, there’s still time. Even when the existential dread brought on by the boring lives of boring people living as though they cannot see the cracks in reality are about to explode, there’s still time. There’s still time to dig yourself out of the ground and be reborn.

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(L-R) Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine in I SAW THE TV GLOW; courtesy of A24.